Special Interest
DigQuest
Excavate ancient sites layer by layer, analyze artifacts with real archaeological methods, and reconstruct the stories of lost civilizations — from Mesopotamia to the Maya.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, praises, and patiently scaffolds learning. On-device AI personalizes the mentor's responses to your kid's progress — never connecting to a server, never collecting data.
#FFA726 DigQuest turns you into an archaeologist! Excavate ancient dig sites grid by grid, analyze mysterious artifacts in your lab, and piece together the stories of lost civilizations. Every discovery is a clue that helps you understand how ancient people lived, worked, and played.
Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
DigQuest's 5-character cast embodies the foundational archaeology-and-cultural-context primitives — stratigraphic context (Layer), artifact-typological analysis (Shape), dating techniques (Past), cultural-context inference (Keep), and community-partnership ethics (Ask). Trowel (mentor) frames each primitive; cast embodies them at youth-archaeology-club scale (NEVER Indiana-Jones / treasure-hunter / pith-helmet-colonialism register). Cultural-archaeology gate enforced (STRONGEST Wave 17 sensitivity burden): NAGPRA + UNDRIP-grounded framing; Ask co-introduces with Keep at kit 7 as the cluster's ethical anchor.
Layer
Stratigraphic context — where in the layered earth? (vertical chronology, context integrity)
Shape
Artifact-typological analysis — what family of object? (comparative typology, craft traditions)
Past
Dating techniques — when by which method? (dates as ranges with confidence intervals)
Keep
Cultural-context inference — keep-what-people-said, not invent-what-they-must-have-meant
Ask
Community-partnership ethics — whose story is this and who gets to tell it? (NAGPRA + UNDRIP-grounded, descendant-community partnership)
What's inside
Excavation
Carefully dig through layers of earth grid by grid. Different soil layers come from different time periods. Go slowly -- rushing can damage artifacts! Use the r
Artifact Lab
Bring your finds to the lab for analysis. Clean them, identify what they are, figure out how old they are using dating methods, and catalog them. Some broken ar
Civilization Stories
As you find more artifacts from the same civilization, you unlock their story. Learn about 12 different ancient cultures and how they lived.
Field Journal
Sketch your artifacts, write notes about your discoveries, and record your theories. Great archaeologists always keep detailed notes!
Mentored by Trowel — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How DigQuest handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ No ads, no in-app purchases — you pay once
- ✅ COPPA compliant under the 2026 FTC amendments
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
DigQuest runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
DigQuest is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch