Shadow Match
A free game for children where a shadow appears and you find what cast it. Three levels, no clock, and no way to lose.
- Free
- No ads
- No account
- No download
- Works offline
- Single player
How do you play?
- Pick a level - Easy, medium or hard. What changes is how many choices and how alike they are.
- Look at the shadow - It sits above, large and clear, with nothing but the shape.
- Choose a picture - Touch whichever you think cast it. A wrong answer costs nothing.
- Keep going - A correct answer moves you up a level and brings a new shadow.
About this game
One shadow above. A few pictures below. Touch the one that matches.
The interesting thing about these levels is what does not change. Medium offers four choices and hard offers four, exactly the same number, so a blind guess is worth 25% on both. What changes is where the choices come from. On medium each one belongs to a different category, an elephant beside a chair beside an apple, and shadows of things that different separate at a glance. On hard they all come from one family, so you get four animal silhouettes that are all roundish with four legs. The guess is worth the same. The looking is worth far less.
Easy offers three choices, which is 33.3% to a guess, and those also come from different categories. That is a deliberately gentle way in: a three-year-old seeing an elephant shadow beside a chair shadow understands the game within a second and without anybody explaining it.
A shadow is a shape with the detail removed, and that is exactly what trains here. No colour to go by, no face, no texture. What is left is the outline, and recognising things by outline alone is a real skill. Children are much better at it than adults expect, especially with animals.
A wrong answer costs nothing at all. The shadow stays, another try is available immediately, and no score falls. Levels continue without end and the number kept is how far you got at that difficulty.
What does it teach?
Recognition by shape
No colour and no detail, so only the outline is left. That is a skill in itself.
Comparing similar things
On hard every choice comes from one family, so you have to find the small difference rather than the obvious one.
Visual vocabulary
Every round shows an animal or an object, and children name them out loud unprompted.
Thinking before touching
Nothing punishes a mistake, so the game teaches stopping out of interest rather than fear.
Tips
Look at the edges
A trunk, ears, a tail, a chair leg. The features sticking out identify a shape faster than the body does.
Count the legs
On hard all the animals are roundish, so leg count and tail length are what actually separate them.
Take your time
There is no clock at all. A child who looks for five seconds is right far more often than one who taps immediately.
Start on easy even if older
It is not patronising, it explains the game without words. One round there is enough.
What age is it for?
3 to 4
Easy. Three choices from distant categories, so success is nearly guaranteed.
5 to 6
Medium. Four choices, still from different worlds.
7 and up
Hard, where every shadow comes from one family. This is where it gets interesting.
Parents
Nothing to lose and no clock, which makes this a good one for a quiet moment unsupervised.
Accessibility
One tap, no dragging and no holding. Pictures are larger than 2cm square on any screen and spaced far enough apart that an imprecise tap lands correctly. The entire game is built on shape rather than colour, so colour blindness is not merely accommodated here, it is irrelevant. No clock, no countdown and nothing that flashes. There is no reading anywhere, and every round is understandable from the pictures alone.
Playing together
Name it first
Ask your child to say the animal before touching. You hear whether they recognised it.
Real shadows
Turn off the light and make hand shadows on the wall. Same game, no screen, considerably funnier.
You do the tapping
Your child explains which shadow fits and why, and you touch it. It forces a reason.
Find the one difference
On hard, work out together what single feature separates the two most similar choices.
Common questions
Is the shadow game free?
Completely. Nothing to pay and no purchases inside the game. Every game on the site is open from the first second.
Do I need to download or sign up?
No to both. It runs in the browser with no download and no account, and we do not ask for an email.
What is the difference between medium and hard?
Not the number of choices, which is four on both, so a guess is worth 25% either way. On hard every choice comes from one family, so the silhouettes resemble each other and a quick glance is not enough.
What happens on a wrong answer?
Nothing. The shadow stays and another try is available straight away. No score drops and no lives run out.
Are there ads?
None. No banners and no video between levels.
Does it work offline?
Yes. After one visit the game is stored on the device and runs on a plane.
My child cannot read yet. Is that a problem?
Not at all. There is not one word that has to be read to play. Every round is understandable from the pictures.
How is the record measured?
By how many levels you cleared in a row, where higher is better, kept separately per difficulty. The level counter resets when the difficulty changes, so they are not comparable.
What age is this for?
From about three on easy. A child that age recognises an elephant shadow without anybody explaining what a shadow is.
Does it collect data about my child?
No. There is no signup and no name. No session recording and no behavioural advertising. We count how many times a game was opened, with nothing attached that identifies who opened it.