Shelf Control: Experience A World With Only Numbers And No Letters In Numberlys

Last week, Moonbot Studios released its latest iOS title, the egg-citing arcade game Lollipop 3: Eggs of Doom. To mark the occasion, we're going to dedicate this week's edition of Shelf Control to one of the renowned developer's earlier efforts, the wonderful storybook and animated short hybrid app Numberlys. Of course, Numberlys, which was released in January 2012, wasn't the first storybook and animated short hybrid app from Moonbot Studios. The first was released in May 2011, and it's none other than The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which was based on the Academy Award-winning animated short film of the same name. Also worth mentioning are Numberlys' predecessor, the music video app Bullseye by Polyphonic Spree (released in July 2011), and its successor, the story-driven puzzle adventure game Chipotle Scarecrow (released in September 2013). Now, on to Numberlys ... If you can't see the video embedded above, please click here. Numberlys follows the story of a world with only numbers and no letters. "Everyone liked numbers," the app's quirky narrator recounts. "They had nice shapes. And kept things orderly. And everything added up ... So life was sort of ... Numberly." Small wonder then that, given the dull and monotonous orderliness afforded by numbers, the world of Numberlys is depicted in "Metropolis"-esque dystopian black and white and set to ominous music. Fortunately, five of that world's citizens, namely, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, realize that they can do something different from, if not better than, just numbers. And so begins their mission to fashion the letters of the alphabet. And so, too, begins much of the interactivity of the app, which lets you and your little ones help the alphabetically inclined numerical reformers as they use beams, gears, and other implements in creating the alphabet from A to Z. Numberlys is available in the App Store for $5.99. It's compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 5.0 or later. As always, if you have suggestions for Shelf Control, please feel free to email me at aldrin@appadvice.com or simply leave a comment below. [gallery link="file" order="DESC"]