Drafted with AI assistance and reviewed, fact-checked and edited by hand before publishing - see our AI transparency page for how we use AI across the app.
The games in spelling.live have always been the fun part. That's the point of them - practice sticks better when it doesn't feel like practice. But a few parents told us the same thing: once a child had unlocked a game, they'd happily sit and play it, and the actual spelling practice quietly took a back seat. The reward had become the activity.
So we've rebalanced how the whole reward loop works. The principle is simple: practice is the engine, and the games are the treat that practice pays for.
Coins come from practice now - only from practice
Every correctly spelled word in practice earns coins, and we've made them far more generous than before: 40 coins for a typed or tapped word, 50 for one written by hand, plus a bonus on every five-in-a-row streak and extra for cracking a word your child has missed before. A good five-word practice session now earns around 200 coins.
What's changed is where coins don't come from: the games no longer pay coins. Playing Word Search or Letter Maze is still fun, still uses your child's real word list, and still keeps a high score and leaderboard place - but the only way to earn spendable coins is to practise your spelling. That keeps the incentive pointed where it should be.
Unlocking a game buys plays, not a permanent pass
Previously, spending coins unlocked a game forever. Now a purchase buys a set number of plays, and when those run out the game locks again. A bit more practice earns the coins for another batch - so there's always a gentle nudge back to the spelling.
We've tuned the play counts to match how each game feels. The slower, word-heavy games that are closest to real practice - Word Search and Boggle - come with plenty of plays. The quick arcade games - Letter Climb and Letter Maze - come with fewer, so they stay an occasional treat rather than the whole session.
You're in control of the balance
Every price and play count is yours to set. Open the parental controls (the cog on your child's card, behind your PIN if you've set one) and you'll find a new Game prices & plays section: adjust what each game costs in coins and how many plays a purchase grants, for all your children at once. Make a favourite cheaper, make the arcade games rarer, or level everything out. The app ships with sensible defaults - Word Search and Boggle come with plenty of plays, the quick arcade games with fewer - so you only need to touch this if our starting numbers don't suit your family.
Ranks haven't changed - and they're still the real goal
Alongside coins, children still earn ⭐ points from practice, and those points drive their rank on the agent ladder - from Rookie up through Cadet, Recruit, Operative, Investigator, Field Agent, Secret Agent, Cipher Agent, Codebreaker, Master Agent and finally Spymaster. Rank is earned purely through spelling practice; the games don't shortcut it. It's the long-term goal that a single game score never could be, and it's shown on your child's card and on the game leaderboards.
Why we made the change
None of this is about making the games harder to reach. It's about keeping them in their proper place - the reward at the end of good practice, not a way to skip it. Coins you earn by spelling, games that cost a little practice to keep playing, and a rank that only real practice can raise: taken together, they keep every child's time in the app pointed at the thing that actually matters, which is getting better at spelling.
As always, this started as feedback from families using the app. If the new balance feels off for your child - too generous, too tight, a game you wish had more plays - tell us, or just adjust it yourself in the parent admin. It's the fastest way to shape what ships next.