For parents & guardians
A low-tech adventure
The Society arrives on paper — sealed letters, ciphers, maps and missions, answered on paper. How much further technology gets is up to you.
Plenty of families are trying to give their children less screen and more world, and plenty of products now say they help. Ours is simple about it: the whole game is paper. Whether a screen ever comes near it is a decision for the grown-ups in the house, made with their eyes open, and we have built it so that either answer works.
Screen-free if you want it
The whole game is built to be played offline. A Noticer never needs a screen, an app or an account: the letters arrive in the letterbox, on the doormat, or wherever the grown-up running it decides; the catalogue cards come by post; and the child’s side of it is paper from end to end. If your family plays it completely screen-free, it works exactly as intended.
Why we say “low-tech” rather than “screen-free”
Because the choice should be yours, not a rule we impose. Some families want no screens in the game at all; others are happy with a little, in the right place, under their eye. So we make one promise instead: the adventure is complete on paper, and where a screen can add something, it is optional and stays in the hands of the grown-ups.
Where a screen might come in
Some printed artefacts carry a code that unlocks a record in the Society’s online catalogue — a bonus for the curious, never required to play. We may add optional screen versions of some missions later. When we do, the paper version will be whole without them, and the device will be yours to hand over or not.
What never changes
- The adventure is complete on paper. Every letter, mission and mystery works without a screen. A family that never allows one misses no part of the story.
- Screens are optional extras, never the game. Where something has a screen version, it is an alternative to a paper version or a bonus alongside it — skipping it never breaks the adventure.
And the rule above all the others: we never send a letter to a child — every one comes to you. How the game works behind the curtain is explained plainly in Safety for Parents.