One of the great things about working in product development is that you get to dink around with other products all the time. On a whim, I bought “The Numberlys” which is an animated book recently on various top lists over in the Apple App Store. It’s a book, a video game and a movie all wrapped into an app. It’s luminous, happy, educational (if you’re my 4 year old) and inspirational. It has all the great qualities of a work of art: it’s literary, magical, and inspirational. It makes you smile and it makes you think. I gave it to D, my aforementioned 4-year-old, and he has read it once through each of the last 4 days. Getting him to sit still for 30 minutes is feat enough worthy of praise. We both have had fun playing the app together.

If you should need such a thing, the synopsis is as follows: the Numberlys are a society of beings where the conventions of the day are ruled by numbers. The society is monochromatic, dull and filled with the dust, smoke and debris of industry gone amok. A small band of Numberlys, not fit to be satisfied with status quo, start inventing letters. With the user as helper, those numbers get “built” and named. And with their arrival, a new world comes to be.

The app is not expensive. $5.99. It’s iPhone and iPad compatible. You may only play it once end to end, but I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. If you linger long enough on each screen, some of the details are thoroughly remarkable. It’s worth cycling through more times to pick up on those nuances. Don’t let the simplicity of the game deceive you. The music, copywriting and art direction are all worth the price of admission.

When you’re done, cruise on over to the Numberlies Web site and have a look at some of the making of videos. Here’s a trailer in tell-tale portrait format.

The Numberlys App Teaser from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Or follow Moonbot studios on Twitter. I await their next app with glee.