Toca Boca World

If a dollhouse could keep growing, it would look like Toca Boca World. This is Toca Boca's giant open-ended play space for kids: a colourful city called Bop City, full of apartments, shops, schools, and hangouts, with no rules, no scores, and no timer telling anyone how to play. Children make up the stories; the app just supplies the world, the characters, and about a thousand props.

Nearly everything is theirs to change. The character creator designs faces, hair, outfits, and accessories, and the Home Designer redoes rooms down to the walls and furniture, with pets, food, toys, and gloriously silly items to scatter around. Roleplay is the engine: today the character runs a café or a pet hospital, tomorrow a fashion studio or a rooftop party, and characters move freely between locations as the story demands.

Exploration gets rewarded quietly. Locations hide gems, secret rooms, and surprises, and every Friday the Post Office hands out a free gift — furniture, outfits, decorations, even pets. The world also grows through optional packs in the in-app shop, which parents should know about: the free city is generous, but the extra locations and content cost money.

For parents, the safety design is the headline: it is single-player only, with no chat and no strangers, it is COPPA compliant, and there are no third-party ads interrupting play. Controls are touch-first and readable by pre-readers. Few kids' apps respect their audience this completely.