Be who you are

Like Toca Boca’s other popular kids’ apps, Toca Life World is an open-ended sandbox. Children are free to explore colourful virtual farms, hair salons and construction sites with characters they’ve created themselves.

But while Toca Boca’s games are driven by imagination, they ensure their characters are truly representative of everyone: Toca Life World now offers over 2,000 customizations—not just hip hairstyles and silly glasses but prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, and hearing aids.

“We put a lot into making everything look cool, something you’d feel proud of having,” says Toca Boca general manager Mathilda Engman. “If it’s a wheelchair, it should be fun in the same way as an outfit.”

These options appear front and centre (prosthetic limbs are among the first options you see), and Toca Boca is continually adding new attributes suggested by users.

“These diversity and inclusion aspects are an ongoing process. We’re never done,” says Engman. “Having an audience that tells us what we should add – and what they’re happy about – is the greatest thing.”

One request the developer is working on: characters with vitiligo, a condition that causes skin to lose its colour. The ability to add scars and customise missing limbs is also in the works.

To ensure these additions are representative and thoughtful, Toca Boca consults an external advisory board with members of varied backgrounds. During the development of the character-creator tool, the board suggested going beyond mobility-related attributes and making sure lighter skin tones didn’t come across as more desirable than darker ones.

“We provide a mixture of skin tones. They’re not going from, say, white to black, which unfortunately is how they’ve have been promoted in the media for years,” says senior play designer Mikhail Novoseltsev.

“It’s important that every kid feels invited and welcome,” says Engman. “That’s why we spend so much time making sure you’re able to create yourself.”

To customize your character in Toca Life World, go to the home screen (where you swipe among playsets) and tap the icon at the top right.

Toca Boca World

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