Osmo uses physical objects to turn iPad games from a solitary experience into a social one (review)

A lot of parents don’t like the antisocial nature of mobile games as they see kids staring at their screens while hiding from the world. That’s why Pramod Sharma, a parent himself and former Google manager, became an entrepreneur and started Tangible Play. He wanted to use the combination of an iPad app and physical objects to bring kids back into a social environment with real-world play. The result is Osmo, a platform for multiple physical-digital combination games.

After the company unveiled the product in May, it received more than seven figures in preorders — or at least a million. That’s a huge result for a brand new kind of game. I’ve tried Osmo’s three games with my own children, and it is really a magical experience. You can play games like Osmo Words, a hangman-style game where you guess the word behind an image, with two people.