Questions
Short answers for grown-ups. Anything else: [email protected].
What is Letra?
Letra is a 3D alphabet game. Your kid walks, drives, flies, or sails around little 3D worlds (a park, the sky, the ocean, the sea bed, the moon, and several planets) looking for letters. There are three games: Find the Alphabet, Match the Sound, and Spell the Word.
What ages is it for?
It's made for ages 4 to 6, but kids of all ages can play it.
What does it teach?
Letter names and letter sounds (phonics), and spelling short words sound by sound. You can show uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or both. More updates are coming soon!
Is it based on research?
It's built on what early-reading research recommends, though Letra itself hasn't been studied. Each letter comes with its name and its sound together, which research suggests helps young kids learn letter sounds (Piasta, Purpura & Wagner, 2010). Words are stretched out with the sounds blended ("Sssunnn"), which one study found helped kindergartners decode new words (Gonzalez-Frey & Ehri, 2021). Letters whose name doesn't hold their sound, like H and W, get an extra hint word, because those are the hardest to learn (Treiman et al., 2008). It's a game, not a reading program.
Does my kid need to read?
No. A voice talks your kid through everything, every letter's name is said out loud, and every menu question is spoken. A kid who can't read yet can play on their own.
How much does it cost?
The iPhone and iPad app is $4.99. It is not a subscription. Refunds are handled by the store you bought it from.
Is there a free version?
Yes. The base game is free to play in the browser at playletra.com. The paid app adds the ocean, the sea bed, the planets, the boat character, and Letter Town, where the words your kid spells move in, so you can see their progress.
Are there ads or in-app purchases?
There are no ads and no subscription. At launch the app is one $4.99 purchase with nothing sold inside it. We plan to offer optional expansion packs later. If we do, they will sit behind the grown-up gate, and kids will never see a purchase prompt.
What data does Letra collect?
Nothing from your kid. There are no accounts and no tracking. Progress is saved on your device and never leaves it. The app counts nothing. The website counts page visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies, and keeps an email address only if a grown-up joins the news list. The full details are in the privacy policy.
Does it work offline?
The app does. Every voice, song, and picture is inside it, so it plays in the car, on a plane, or in airplane mode. The free web version needs a connection to load.
Which devices does it run on?
iPhone and iPad (App Store). Android is coming soon. The free version runs in a web browser.
What is the grown-up gate?
The gear button on the menu asks a two-digit addition question before it opens the grown-ups panel. Settings and every link that leaves the app sit behind it, so a kid can't wander out to a website or an email by accident.
Where is my kid's progress saved?
On your device only. Deleting the app, or clearing your browser data on the website, wipes it. There is no account, so progress does not move between devices.
Who made Letra?
A dad named Tanner and his kids. The story is on the about page.
How do I get help?
Email [email protected]. It goes straight to the person who made the game.