Shaka-Luli Help

Shaka-Luli is a free storybook adventure for children ages 4 to 8. Mister Meanie’s grey fog has put a seaside town to sleep, and two young heroes, Emma and her little brother Jonus, wake it up by solving math and reading puzzles. The game works fully offline, with no ads, no in-app purchases and no accounts, and it collects no data.

Starting an adventure

Open the app and tap Play.
Under Choose your adventure, tap New Adventure.
On the Who’s playing? screen, choose Emma, Jonus, or Both of us. Tap a hero’s name if you would like to change it.
Tap Let’s go! The story begins, and every story scene has a Skip button.

To carry on another day, tap Play and then tap your adventure in the list. Each adventure keeps its own progress, so a family can keep more than one.

Choosing a hero

Emma’s puzzles are pitched at about age 8. She adds and subtracts to 100, learns multiplication and division facts, works with place value and spells longer words. Jonus’s puzzles are pitched at about age 4. He counts to 20, adds and takes away within 10, learns letter names and sounds, and reads three-letter words.

With Both of us, the heroes take turns part by part, so two children can pass the phone back and forth on one adventure. A speaker button on each puzzle reads the task aloud, and on Jonus’s turns the game reads it automatically.

Deleting an adventure

Tap Play, then swipe left on the adventure under Choose your adventure and tap Delete. The game asks once more, so tap Delete to confirm or Keep to cancel. Deleting can’t be undone, and it removes that adventure’s progress and hero names. The Grown-ups PIN and the daily limit belong to the iPhone, so they stay in place for your other adventures. Deleting the app from your iPhone removes everything the game has saved, including the PIN and the limit.

The Grown-ups area

Tap Grown-ups, the button with a lock in the top corner of the title screen and the adventure screens, to open the parent area. Its settings belong to the iPhone, so one PIN and one daily limit cover every adventure, and the area works even before any adventure has been started.

Creating your PIN

The first time the area opens, it asks a grown-up to create a PIN. Type four digits your child won’t guess and tap Next, then type the same four digits again and tap Confirm new PIN. If the two don’t match, the game asks you to start again. From then on the area asks for that PIN, and you can change it inside under Change PIN.

Forgotten PIN

Tap Forgot PIN? under the keypad. The game asks a grown-up multiplication question, such as 17 × 4, and you type the two-digit answer. A wrong answer brings a new question. The right answer clears the old PIN so you can create a new one straight away, and no adventure loses any progress.

Daily play time

Use −5 and +5 to set a daily limit in five-minute steps, or Off for no limit. The limit counts only the time the game is open and in use on this iPhone, added up across every adventure, and the panel shows how many minutes have been played today and how many are left. When the time is used up, a Time to rest screen takes the place of the game, and its Back to the title button is the only way on. To let play continue the same day, open the Grown-ups area and raise the limit or tap Off.

Sending everyone to rest

The Time to rest button inside the Grown-ups area saves the game and sends everyone back to the title screen straight away, which makes a good moment to put the phone down and go play outside.

Game sound

The Game sound switch turns the music and sound effects on or off.

This week

Bars show the minutes played on each of the last seven days. When an adventure is open, you will also see how many puzzles each hero has solved, the share of right answers and how many skills they practiced this week, and See the kids’ progress opens the same My Progress screen your child sees, with skills and badges.

Privacy policy

The Privacy policy button shows the full policy inside the app, with no links out. The same text is on our privacy page.

Troubleshooting

If there is no sound, check the Game sound switch in the Grown-ups area and the iPhone’s volume.
The read-aloud voice is the English (US) voice built into iOS. You can download a clearer voice in the iPhone’s Settings under Accessibility, then Spoken Content, then Voices.
Saved adventures live only on the device. Setting up a new iPhone from an iCloud or computer backup of the old one normally brings the game’s progress along with your other app data.

Contact

Please send questions, ideas and bug reports to support.shakaluli@greatlair.com, and mention your iPhone model and iOS version. Our privacy policy explains how the app handles information (it collects none).