Award-Winning Leo's Pad Comes to China, SmarTots Partners With Kidaptive

BEIJING, Oct. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SmarTots and Kidaptive, two major players in the kids’ educational game space, team up to bring Leo’s Pad to China. Leo’s Pad is a comprehensive learning game that is developed in collaboration with researchers and experts from Stanford University and a 3D animation department including former Pixar artists. Having already enjoyed much acclaim in English markets, the game is now available in Chinese on the SmarTots platform.

For SmarTots, Leo's Pad is a perfect fit. "The big distribution channels are very interested in this kind of content," says Jesper Lodahl, SmarTots CEO. "This is some of the best content we've seen in China. Kids from user testing were captivated by the engaging experience, clocking in 12 minutes of session time on average." As interest in apps targeted at children increases, developers are leveraging more resources and better funding to make truly impressive products. "This is a perfect market fit," he continues. "International-quality production values and English language learning games like this are the sort of thing we're proud to bring to China. I'm excited to see market adoption." Leo's Pad is an early example of the energy that is being injected into finding unique, modern ways for kids to learn.

As China becomes recognized as the largest education market in the world, the idea of tapping into it via the app space is both lucrative and challenging. With over 100 million kids under age 6 and more iOS and Android users than the United States, China is a market with immense potential, but factors like the fragmented distribution networks, difficulty to localize and fear of intellectual property violation have made entering the Chinese market difficult for developers based in the west who lack a trustworthy China-based partner.

Organizations like SmarTots bridge the gap between successful international content providers like Kidaptive and the receptive Chinese families. For SmarTots, the opportunity to localize and distribute content of this quality makes the Chinese release of Leo's Pad "a perfect fit," says Lodahl.

About Leo's Pad:

As a game, Leo's Pad is something different. The Hollywood-quality 3D animation was done by artists who have also worked for Pixar, and the voice acting—originally in English and now in Chinese-leverages the talent of seasoned industry pros. Leo's Pad sets an unprecedented standard for audio-visual quality in the industry.

Not content to just be a pretty face, the game is also backed by the expertise of Dylan Arena, co-founder of Kidaptive and Stanford Learning Sciences Ph.D. His focus has been on applying his understanding of how our brains work to developing more natural, effective learning methods. Leo's Pad applies the most modern revelations to engage kids and make them think.

How Leo's Pad does this is by segmenting play time into short adventures, or "appisodes" for kids to play through. In each appisode, kids join a young Leonardo da Vinci (the title character, Leo) on an adventure with friends Gally (Galileo) and Marie Curie.

Although the story is guided by Leo, each appisode is rife with mini-games ranging from logic and shape puzzles to simply painting freely. Each episode focuses on a moral (such as "practice makes perfect" or "it's great to share") and the skills learned throughout each appisode give the child the tools needed to help the characters. In this way, the kids are never "drilling" anything, as is often the feeling with more traditional educational games like flash cards or most math games. Leo's Pad is unique in that learning becomes an intrinsic part of the game's progress.

About SmarTots:

SmarTots is a leading educational kid game publisher targeting age 2-7.

Focused on fun learning, SmarTots has reached more than 3 million kids in China across it's 60+ localized international kids titles.

SmarTots sets the bar for quality kids apps in Asia by localizing and republishing the best kids apps from the west and producing brand partnership kids apps with names they already love. SmarTots beat out 100 applicants from around the world to win the GMIC G-Startup award in 2011, and in December 2012 received Series A funding from Softbank's Pan-Asia fund. SmarTots has already impacted thousands of families, and plans to expand its reach throughout all of Asia in 2013.

About Kidaptive:

Kidaptive is an innovative education and technology company dedicated to smart storytelling on iPads and a curriculum developed in collaboration with top university researchers to create entertaining and adaptive content that helps children learn.

SOURCE SmarTots