The StarSeeker user guide

The row across the top of the game is the HUD — the ship's dashboard. Here is what each part is. The most important thing to know: every icon here is tappable, and tapping it makes Nova explain it out loud, so a child who cannot read never has to guess.

⭐Star Dust counter

The one thing your child earns and collects. It is purely cosmetic — it fills the rank patch and earns bragging rights. Nothing in the game costs Star Dust, so it is never spent and only ever climbs.

⚡Voice Power meter

Appears inside missions when the microphone and sound are on. Every sound or word your child says out loud charges it a little. Fill it before the mission ends for a +15 Star Dust bonus. With the radio off, the meter simply does not appear.

🔥Streak flame

How many days in a row your child has flown a mission. The number beside the flame is the current streak.

🛡Streak shields

Earned protection that saves the streak when a day is missed. The shield count only shows when your child owns at least one.

🪪Cadet chip

The little name badge. Tap it and Nova says the cadet's name out loud; press and hold for about six-tenths of a second to switch to another cadet on the same device.

🏅Rank patch

Your child's rank, set by their all-time Star Dust total. Because Star Dust is never spent, rank only goes up.

⚙️Settings gear

Sound on and off, the radio (microphone) on and off, a button to replay any how-to-play explanation, and the door to the Grown-ups area.

Every mission follows the same friendly shape, so your child always knows what comes next. There are no timers and no way to fail — a mission only ever ends in a landing.

1. 1

   Mission Briefing

   A hologram briefing sets up the story and the goal for the flight ahead.

2. 2

   Boost Picker

   An optional chance to spend one earned boost before launch. Easy to skip — nothing is lost by flying without one.

3. 3

   Systems Check

   Five quick rounds: Nova plays a sound and your child taps the letter that makes it. A gentle warm-up of sounds they already know.

4. 4

   New Tech

   The new sound is introduced properly — a big letter on screen, a keyword picture, a mouth-shape cue, and three say-it-with-me repetitions.

5. 5

   Two or more minigames

   Focused games that build, read, sort, and blend the new sound from several angles.

6. 6

   Quest beats

   Short story moments in the 3D mission world where the new skill gets used in context.

7. 7

   Read Aloud finale

   Your child reads the mission's words aloud to finish. On the last mission of planets 4 through 11 this becomes a Boss Showdown instead.

8. 8

   Mission Complete

   The Star Dust tally, a rank check, and a cargo loot reveal to celebrate the landing.

Star Scan is an optional, roughly five-minute mini-mission that measures where to begin instead of guessing. It serves a few short word reads per band, walking up when they go well and easing off when they miss — so it lands your child on a starting planet backed by what it actually saw.

• Never feels like a test. There is no fail language anywhere — a missed word is a 'good try,' and the scan simply steers to an easier band.
• Runs tap-only without a microphone, so it works whether or not voice coaching is on. A tap scan measures word recognition; it never gates anything.
• A guardian can skip it entirely. The starting planet from the setup questionnaire stays the fallback if Star Scan is skipped.
• It plays once, up front. After it sets the starting point, your child flies the normal mission sequence from there.

Missions rotate through a set of short games. Each one practises the same reading skills from a different angle — listening, blending, spelling, and reading in context. Here is every game in plain terms.

1. 01Sound Scanner

   Nova plays a sound; your child taps the letter that makes it. Pure listen-and-find.

2. 02Launch Sequence

   Letters light up left to right. Your child taps them in order, blends them together, and says the whole word to launch the ship.

3. 03The Forge

   Nova says a word and your child builds it from letter tiles. This is spelling practice — hearing a word and choosing the letters that spell it. (Different from Star Forge World, the building sandbox further down.)

4. 04Sound Forge

   Like The Forge, but your child builds the word from sound blocks — chunks and syllables — instead of single letters. Good practice for hearing the bigger pieces hiding inside a word.

5. 05Meteor Breaker

   Written words are matched to picture meteors: read the word, tap its picture.

6. 06Bio-Dome Sprint

   Your child reads a sentence and a plant grows a little more with each correct read.

7. 07Heart Word Lab

   For tricky words that cannot be sounded out neatly (like the or said): tap the sound chunks, put a heart on the part that must be remembered by heart, rebuild the word, and say it.

8. 08Word Surgery

   On planet 11 only: long words are split into parts and then stitched back together, so big words stop looking scary.

9. 09Story Mission

   The last mission of each planet: a real, fully decodable story read one page at a time.

10. 10Cargo Sort

    A word appears and your child taps which of two labeled cargo holds it belongs in — sorting by the sound or spelling pattern printed on each hold.

11. 11Signal Decoder

    One word in a sentence is jammed. Your child taps the printed word that fits the gap.

Alongside reading, StarSeeker has a math track built the same way — missions, a story, and Nova guiding the way. 5 planets are playable today, from counting through ratios. Here is what your child does on each one.

1. 01Tally Flats

   Load and unload cargo, arrange crates in ten-frames, and mark each quantity on the Number Rail.

2. 02Carry Canyon

   Build bridges from base-ten rods. Regroup by physically breaking one ten-rod into ten ones.

3. 03Array Foundry

   Tile factory floors in rows and columns, form equal groups, and measure area in floor tiles.

4. 04Fraction Falls

   Slice and share water channels, then place their magnitudes on the Number Rail.

5. 05Ratio Bazaar

   Compare prices and trade cargo by ratio at a working port.

On the final mission of planets 4 through 11, a Glitchling lieutenant appears and taunts your child. Reading the words correctly de-scrambles the signal lock, and the villain Garble escapes with his catchphrase. It is a celebration, not a test — there is still no way to lose.

On the final three planets, Garble stops relying on the usual lieutenants and deploys his elite guard — Jumble on Block World, Hush on Deep Space, and Snip on Word Surgery Station. Each one is keyed to that planet's hardest skill family, and each shows up inside that planet's quest episode rather than the showdown itself. Like every other villain, they fold the moment a reader puts things back in order.

A three-season quest arc runs alongside the planet missions, across stages 2–11. Each season is a set of episodes tied to the planets your child is actually reading — signs to read, letters to deliver, recipes to follow — and every written clue is decodable at that planet's level. Reading is never the blocked path: acting on the text simply completes as your child finishes the mission that hosts it.

• Season 2 · The Word Storm

  3 episodes across Planets 2–4. Read a sign, follow a recipe, and deliver the mail.

• Season 3 · The Scramble Spreads

  4 episodes across Planets 5–8, each fronting that planet's own Glitchling lieutenant.

• Season 4 · The Elite Guard

  3 episodes across Planets 9–11, where Garble deploys Jumble, Hush, and Snip.

Outside of flying, the station has a few gentle reading spots:

• Mission Board — the quest log, showing current and completed quests.
• Daily Mailbox — a short letter arrives each day, and every word can be tapped to hear it read aloud.
• Notice Board— station notices to read at your child's own pace.
• In-mission reading — Sign Gates, Recipes, and a Letter Reader, where a little real reading opens the way forward.

There are no timers and no fail states anywhere in StarSeeker. Your child can take all the time they need.

Once a day, a short, bonus Mission of the Day appears for each cadet. It is built from the words and skills that child is due to review, so it quietly brings yesterday's hard-won sounds back around. It runs three quick beats — a systems-check review, one minigame, and a read-aloud finale — and finishing it opens a daily cargo chest full of building blocks for Star Forge World.

• Purely bonus. It never touches stage progression, unlocks, or certification — nothing about the main flight path changes if a day is missed.
• It counts as activity, so a daily completion helps keep a streak alive.
• One per cadet per day. The mission is seeded for that child on that day, so it is the same if they replay it.
• The cargo chest is claimed once, server-side, and can never be granted twice for the same day.

Between missions, your child returns to the space station. It has four bays, each with six display slots to fill with the cargo they collect. There are 32 collectible cargo items in all, grouped into 12 named sets. Tap any item you have collected and it speaks its name.

The four bays

The Forge here is the station bay, not the spelling minigame of the same name.

A few of the collectibles

Star Dust is the one reward your child collects, and it is earned entirely by reading and trying. Here is every way it adds up, so nothing is a mystery.

Reading practice should never hinge on how a word comes out of your child's mouth. Here is how StarSeeker keeps speaking optional and kind, every step of the way.

• Say-it-with-me voice coaching has Nova model a word and invite your child to say it back, then cheer the attempt. It is off by default; a guardian turns it on per child from the Cadet profiles list at your account.
• Whether or not voice coaching is on, every task can still be answered by tap or a familiar AAC device — speaking is never required to move forward. With the radio off, tap answers every task instead.
• There are no failure buzzers and no red X anywhere in the game. A tricky sound gets modeled again and another try, and progress is measured by the tap your child makes, never by how a word came out of their mouth.
• StarSeeker was built first for a boy with childhood apraxia of speech, and works the same way for any child who benefits from extra modeling, more response time, or a lower-pressure way to practice.