We believe that play is an essential part of every child’s healthy development, and that young people are all individuals with different needs. Apps can facilitate different types of play, where pure fun and pure learning can be integrated. We also believe that the digital technology explosion can be positive for young people, learning and the future. We aim for a shared experience for parents and children, enjoying the Hippotrix experience together.

The windmill is designed so you can blow on the microphone to make it spin.  But sometimes if you live in a noisy place (who doesn’t) you might find the windmill spins by itself.  You can tap on the Hippo to stop it, but sometimes this isn’t enough, so we made a “setting” to switch this function off.

Go to “settings” (grey cogs icon) and scroll down till you find the Hippo Seasons icon and you can change it there.  This works for all iOS versions. Apple decided it such a good idea, that since iOS6 you can enable/disable photos on any of your apps by going to the same “settings” icon, then clicking “privacy” (black hand) icon, then clicking “Photos” (yellow flower) and switch it on or off there.

At present this app is designed for iPad only. This is mainly due to the beautiful visuals deserving a larger screen, and getting realistic interactions on the screen. It is also better for younger hands to explore. So although it will always be best on an iPad, it would be great for people to have the option to play it on their phones occasionally too – never say never.

The microphone is a tiny dot on the top edge of the silvery casing of your iPad. You have to blow quite hard to make it go !

This is correct, you can only use the volume control to mute the sound in our app. According to our tech bods, this occurs because our app has (a rather wonderful) blow into the microphone to spin the windmill function, which puts Hippo Seasons into a different class where this is impossible.