Aardman Animations has created an app designed to encourage children to save for NatWest bank in the United Kingdom.
The app, called Pigby’s Fair, is a smartphone and tablet app for children available now via the Google Play and Apple app stores.
The free-to-download app features NatWest’s new animated savings characters, Pigby and friends and aims to help children learn about saving money through a fun game that features the user as a boy or girl pig character running a stall in an animated fairground. Pigby’s friends hold other stalls so players can check how much his friends have saved and what they’re saving for to inspire and spur them along.
The user is guided by Pigby through a fictional journey where he or she starts by selling ice cream at the fair to earn money and then faces opportunities to spend or save, with saving bonuses being offered at various points. In every five minutes of gameplay the child is taken to the Pigby Bank to deposit some of their hard earned pocket money. They are also able to set their own saving target for new or upgraded stalls and upon reaching their goals they unlock new items and levels to allow them to progress further.
“Our core audience is children, so creating the Pigby’s Fair app was the perfect project for us,” says Heather Wright, executive producer at Aardman Animations. “We wanted to use a concept that children would enjoy and we felt a game based in a fairground was an ideal platform to educate young ones.”
Pigby’s Fair is available now and is free to download for everyone (not just customers) on both the Apple app store and Google Play.
