A sight-words game for kids

Help the puffer fish survive the shark.

Puffer Power turns sight-word practice into a game your kid actually wants to play — no ads, no tracking, nothing else competing for their attention. Just reading practice, and a puffer fish that's counting on them.

▶ Play Now See how it works

Free to play at app.pufferpower.com— works right in the browser, no download.

Puffer Power start screen with a Play button

Why ad-free matters

Kids' apps are usually built to hold attention. This one is built to teach sight words.

A lot of "educational" games for kids are really attention-harvesting machines with a learning objective bolted on. Puffer Power has one job: help a kid recognize a sight word. That's it — so there's no reason to put anything else in the way.

No ads. Ever.

No banner ads, no video ads between rounds, no 'watch this to keep playing.' Nothing to click on except the game.

No accounts, no tracking

Puffer Power doesn't ask for an email, doesn't build a profile, and doesn't need to know anything about your kid to work.

Nothing fighting for attention

No push notifications, no streaks designed to guilt a five-year-old back in, no in-app purchases. Just sight words and a fish.

How it works

Simple enough for a five-year-old. Replayable enough that they'll actually want to.

Step 1 · Listen & pick

Hear the word. Tap the card that spells it.

A friendly voice asks "Which one spells look?" and three flash cards show sight words pulled from the Dolch pre-primer and primer lists — the words most kids meet first when they start reading.

One correct card, two decoys— close enough to keep it a real spelling check, not a guess.
"Say it again" button— no penalty for replaying the audio as many times as needed.
Pick your own word list— a "Choose words" picker lets a parent or kid focus practice on specific words.

A round of Puffer Power showing three word cards to choose from

Puffer Power victory screen: PUFFER POWER!

Step 2 · Grow the puffer

Every correct answer makes the puffer bigger.

Each game is 5 rounds. The shark closes in every round no matter what — so the only way to keep the puffer safe is to keep getting words right.

5 of 5 — "PUFFER POWER!" — the puffer puffs up huge and sends the predator packing.
3–4 of 5 — a close call, scratched but safe.
0–2 of 5 — "Chomp!" — time to try again.

Step 3 · Face something new

Play again and the predator changes.

Every game bumps the puffer up against a different threat, cycling through ten increasingly dramatic predators before starting over. It doesn't change the difficulty of the words — it just keeps the game visually fresh, which turns out to matter a lot to a kid deciding whether to play one more round.

The Two Sharks

The Shark Princess

The Megalodon

The Mosasaurus

The Piranhas

The Electric Eels

The Anglerfish

The Kraken

Why I built this

A game for my youngest son

My youngest son loves video games — and puffer fish. He was starting to learn sight words in school, and the practice apps we tried felt like homework wearing a costume: ads, pop-ups, and characters that had nothing to do with what he actually loved. So I built him one that did — a game where a puffer fish he could root for was on the line, and getting a word right actually meant something.

He liked it enough to keep playing. That's Puffer Power.