Introducing Branchlings: stories that follow your child's imagination
Children have the greatest imaginations. Branchlings helps unleash them: your child dreams up the story, decides what happens at every fork, and watches it come to life. Coming soon to iPhone and iPad, with Android coming soon.
Children have the greatest imaginations. Ask a four-year-old what happens next in a story and you’ll get a dragon, a cupcake, a door to the bottom of the sea and a very important dog, all in one breath. We built Branchlings to help unleash that imagination, and give it somewhere to go.
Branchlings turns your child’s ideas into storybooks, written and painted page by page. Your child dreams up the story, decides what happens at every fork, and adds their own twists along the way.
It starts with their idea
A Branchlings story can start from a few taps (a world, a kind of story, who comes along) or from your child’s own words: “we find a unicorn at the beach who lost her shoes.” Set it in an enchanted forest, outer space, a candy kingdom, or somewhere only they have thought of, like a rainbow waterpark.
They decide what happens
Stories in Branchlings branch. At each fork, painted choices let your child decide what happens next: two for the littlest listeners, and more as they grow. And when none of the choices is quite right, they can tap My idea! and tell you what happens instead: a flying pizza, a talking snowman, a secret door in the cupcake. A grown-up helps type it, Branchlings reads it back to check, and the story follows along.
Afterwards, the story map shows the path they took, while the paths they didn’t take wait behind a lock, asking “What if…?” Read it again tomorrow, pick differently, and it’s a different story.
Anyone they can imagine can come along
An imaginary friend, the family dog, a best friend, Grandma: your child picks who joins the adventure. They can design a character for themselves, too, down to their hair, their glasses and their favorite things, and hearing aids, wheelchairs and head coverings appear in every picture. Or they can invite a friend from the storybook shelf: Sparky the tiny dragon sneezes glitter instead of fire, and Captain Whiskers is a pirate cat who is secretly scared of water.
Painted the way they picture it
Every page is painted for their story, in the style they choose: storybook watercolor, cozy cartoon, clay, paper craft, plush toys, pixel art and more. Each story is written for your child’s age and reading level, from first stories a grown-up reads aloud to longer chapter adventures, and it can be read aloud with each word lighting up as it’s spoken.
Bedtime, beautifully
Around bedtime, new stories turn calm and cozy: a gentle choice or two early on, a storyteller reads it aloud, and the lights go down as it winds to goodnight. When the story ends, it ends. Nothing new starts on its own.
Safe to dream big
There are no ads and no chat, and nothing your child makes is shown to anyone else. Every idea they type, and everything the AI writes, is checked for safety before they see it, and stories need only first names. Grown-ups decide the rest, with a PIN, words to leave out, topics to skip, and a switch for “My idea!”. You can read exactly what we keep, and why, in our privacy policy.
Where to get it
Branchlings is coming soon to iPhone and iPad in the United States, and Android is coming soon. It’s free to download, with in-app purchases, and you can read the sample stories before you choose a plan.
We can’t wait to see where their imaginations go.