Screen time doesn’t have to mean solo time – there are plenty of ways you and your kids can play together on your device. Whether your child is yet to start school, a tech-loving teen or somewhere in between, the App Store is packed full of apps you can enjoy together – many of them educational and all of them fun. Here are some of our favourites.

For the smallest members of the family, learning and playing are often the same thing. Enjoy sitting alongside your children and exploring these games together.

Pok Pok is a virtual playroom based on the Montessori approach to child education, where exploration is key. There’s no winning or losing here, just a smorgasbord of activities that come to life when you and your child start playing around.

If your kids are a little older, chances are they’re just as adept on their device as you are, and eager to discover what’s out there. For your peace of mind, though, you’ll want them hanging out in safe spaces.

Toca Boca World is a beautifully designed open-world game, where kids can explore and role-play to their hearts’ content. You’ll be amazed what they come up with, while in-game events (such as collaborations with pop megastars Olivia Rodrigo, Sienna Spiro and TWICE) regularly show up to keep things fresh.

You can also solve logic puzzles together in the endlessly fun Thinkrolls – who will find the best routes to guide those implausibly cute Thinkrolls through mazes of surprising complexity?

While Hopscotch isn’t technically a game, you and your kids can certainly play with programming in the app – building your own games, apps and animations together by following easy tutorials. You can also play games designed by other users.

Life is similarly angular in the highly playable Crossy Road, an 8-bit arcade game that attempts to answer perennial questions about chickens crossing roads. At heart it’s about helping cute critters avoid getting splatted as they negotiate major carriageways, but the multiplayer option (played on a shared device) adds a competitive edge.

You can also unleash your inner musicians in the wonderfully intuitive Koala Sampler. This easy-to-use music app allows you to build your own tunes from the ground up, using a mix of in-built sounds and samples you’ve recorded yourselves. Whether you choose to form a family band is, of course, up to you.

All of these games are suitable for teens and their parents to play together, but come with the added bonus of options for private games, removing the worry of interacting with strangers online.

Hit whodunnit Among Us is tremendous fun to play with your teens. Be warned, though – any “sus” behaviour is likely to be punished with a trip through an airlock, whether you’re an Impostor or not.

Or try The Past Within, a two-player point-and-click adventure that can’t be played solo. Both participants need the game on their own device and another form of communication (talking across the room works a treat!) if they’re going to solve the mysteries of Rusty Lake.

Older kids will enjoy scary but beautifully stylised survival game Don’t Starve Together – you can (metaphorically) hold each other’s hands in the game’s co-operative gameplay modes.