SPECIAL EVENT
Halloween Spider Smash
21 days of Halloween: a new spooky word lesson, spiders instead of stars, and a giant pumpkin waiting at the end.
ABC Smash: Learn to Read
Reading & grammar word game
$1.99 · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Become a fluent, fast reader — one word at a time. Read the rule, catch the words that match. No ads, no in-app purchases, works fully offline.
ABC Smash is a fast, friendly word game that turns reading and grammar practice into an arcade adventure. Words fly across the screen — read the rule, then catch only the words that match. Word by word, reading becomes fluent and fast.
• A real learning journey
Master the 250 most useful words every beginning reader needs. The game remembers what you know: tricky words come back more often, mastered words make room for new ones. Earn stars and travel toward the ABC Planet as your reading grows.
• How it teaches: the whole word, not the letters
Every word is shown complete and read as one shape, never sounded out letter by letter. Meeting the same word again and again — and having to decide about it within a couple of seconds — is what stores its word picture in memory, so the eye recognises the word instead of decoding it. That is what fluent reading is made of: the fewer words a child has to work out, the more attention is left over for the meaning, and reading gets faster on its own.
Three principles do the work:
— Whole-word recognition. The word is always shown complete, so what is remembered is its picture.
— Spaced repetition. A shaky word comes back sooner and more often; a mastered one steps aside for a new one.
— Gentle time pressure. A short clock rewards recognising over decoding — the step from "I can work it out" to "I just know it".
• Built with a special-education teacher, tested with children
ABC Smash was developed together with a special-education teacher and tested with children who are learning to read. Watching them play let us check that the adaptive system hits the right level of difficulty for each skill — hard enough to learn from, never so hard that a child gives up — so that every minute of practice counts.
• Six reward minigames
Get far enough in a single game and you win a treat to spend, and each one is reading in a different disguise:
— Survival: words rain down, catch the ones that fit the rule
— Pairs: turn two cards — a picture, and the word for it
— Ice Maze: find the hidden words in a grid of letters
— Word Wagon: drive the wagon along the rail and load only the words on its sign
— Word Labyrinth: read a sentence to find the way out
— Recipe Kitchen: cook the dish by reading its list of ingredients
• Grammar practice that feels like play
Smash all the nouns. Now all the verbs. Now the adjectives. Quick rounds build word knowledge without it ever feeling like homework.
• Made for kids — and safe by design
• NO ads
• NO in-app purchases (buy once, play forever)
• NO accounts or sign-up
• NO personal data — no name, no email, no advertising ID
Your child's learning progress stays on your device.
• Plays great anywhere
Works fully offline. Read-aloud prompts use your device's own voice. Choose your background scene, toggle sound, and pick from multiple languages.
• Many languages, one game
Beyond English, ABC Smash supports German, Swiss German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean and Thai — several with language-specific challenges (Japanese & Korean particles, Thai classifiers, and more).
Perfect for first readers, classrooms, and anyone learning a new language. Load the game, read the rule, and start smashing words!
Questions? riedermagic@gmail.com
Events
Ratings & Reviews
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• A Halloween special, 21 October to 10 November: the Spooky Words lesson (English and German). 120 spooky words, spiders instead of stars and a pumpkin waiting at the end, with a moonlit night, a ghost drifting by and a candle burning in the corner.
• New minigame: Rocket Read. Get far enough in a single game to win a rocket, then read the sentence before the rocket lands and answer a question about it. In all ten languages.
• Two new English phonics lessons: "sh, ch or th?" and "Magic e?".
The developer, THOMAS RIEDER, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- THOMAS RIEDER
- Size
- 1.3 MB
- Category
- Word
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 16.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 13.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 8 more
- English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Thai
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Thomas Rieder
