We are pleased to announce that the first app developed as part of our Glowdot Kids app division has been submitted to Apple, with an Android version to follow in two weeks.

We have been building an engine for interactive book development here for the past 6 months, and were eager to launch a few demo projects when we met with Squeaky Frog, LLC about “Hiding Hannah“, and we fell in love with the idea.  We had been internally discussing taking interactive children’s books for the iPad and Android tablets to the next level, by incorporating more game-like elements into the mix, and Hiding Hannah fit with our vision completely.  We had been previewing a lot of really great books on the iPad, but none of them did much more than make a couple sounds or animate a sprite when you interacted with them.  We envision a much more engaging experience in these books: combining all the narrative power of an old-school children’s book with three decades of gaming history to create an experience that simply would not have been possible even two years ago.

Hiding Hannah is a twelve page interactive book about Hannah Howard, a little girl who loves to hide everything, including herself.  Each page is a self-contained mini-game, in which the reader is tasked with finding Hannah, something Hannah Hid, or even Hannah’s parents.  Every read-through is different, as Hannah hides herself, or her object of choice, in a different place each time you load a page.  Hiding Hannah contains beautiful artwork by Sesame Street Workshop digital media artist Melanie McCall and is narrated by Tom Kenny, voice of TV’s Spongebob Squarepants.  Packed with sounds, artwork, animations and interactive elements, we think you’ll agree that Hiding Hannah takes the interactive children’s book to the next level.

The expected release date of Hiding Hannah is November 10, 2011.

The mission of Glowdot Kids is to take your idea for interactive works — whether just a concept, or an already published book — and apply our game development experience to bring it to life on modern devices like the iPad, iPhone and Android tablets.  We can even bring it to the desktop (Windows and Mac) or the web — or all of the above.

If you are an existing publisher who would like to convert your published works to an interactive format and publish to mobile and tablet devices, we can help you from concept, to development, all the way through the publishing process.  And if you are an aspiring author who is looking to publish your concept, we can even help you with art, sound, music and story.