Letter Trace
Free in-browser motion game for kids — you play it by moving in front of the camera. No install, no account.
▶ Play now — it's freeBest on a laptop or tablet with a webcam · nothing is recorded
What is Letter Trace?
A big letter or number is drawn over your camera picture, and one glowing circle lights up on it at a time, starting where the letter starts. You can see yourself on screen, so you simply move a hand into that circle and give it a wiggle — the same movement that pops a bubble. The letter inks itself along its real curve up to that point, and the next circle lights. Reach them all and the letter flashes and a new one appears. There is nothing to steer and no pointer to control. The circles sit on the corners and ends of the letter, so the path your hand takes between them is the letter itself, in the order a school teaches it. Sixty-second round. Every circle you reach scores on its own, so a letter you only half finish still counts, and a letter that will not come is swapped rather than stranding you. Press SPACE for a different letter at any time. Hard opens the whole alphabet and the digits and makes the circles smaller; the letter is always shown in both modes.
How to play Letter Trace
- Press Play now and allow the camera when the browser asks.
- Move about during the 3-2-1. The first letter is drawn where you have been moving and sized to how much of the picture you have used, so stretching to both sides during the count gets you a big letter you can cover. Stand still and you get the smallest one there is, in the middle.
- Find the gold circle. One point on the letter is lit at a time, and it is the only one that is live. You can see yourself on screen beside it, so there is nothing to aim: put a hand where the circle is and shake it there.
- Keep the rest of you still while you do it. One hand working and a quiet body is the whole technique. Waving everything at once is the commonest reason nothing happens.
- Watch the ring round the circle fill as the shake registers, then carry on to the next. SPACE swaps in a different letter whenever you like; H goes home, M turns the music off.
If the ring never fills although you can see yourself clearly, it is nearly always the body rather than the hand — try it seated, with one arm out. If you cannot see yourself at all, the camera never started: the camera help page checks that in one click.
What makes a spot light up
There is no cursor and nothing to steer. The game asks one question, of the lit circle only: did something move right there, just now, more than everywhere else?
- One hand beats all of you. The lit spot has to stand out against the rest of the picture, so a whole-body wave lifts everywhere at once and nothing fires. That is backwards from what a child tries first, so say it before they start.
- Shake, do not park. Arriving is not enough. The game settles to whatever has been going on in that spot for the last second or so, so a hand held there quietly stops counting. Give it a definite wiggle, or take it out and bring it back.
- The ring shows how close you are. The gold arc round the circle fills as your movement is picked up. One that stalls halfway means you are seen but not strongly enough — usually because the rest of you is moving too.
- Only the lit one counts. Reaching ahead does nothing: the next point is a dim white ring, to be looked at rather than reached, and the ones behind shrink to green dots. A circle that has just lit holds off briefly, so a hand already there does not collect it free.
- It stops being strict if it has to. When nothing has been accepted for a couple of seconds, the one-place-at-a-time requirement is dropped and a line appears saying one hand at a time works best. A hint, not a refusal.
It is also why one child at the camera works far better than two: a second person moving anywhere raises the everywhere-else level the lit circle has to beat, and the game mysteriously stops responding to either of them.
Where the letter appears, and how big
The letter is not in a fixed place: each one is drawn over the part of the picture you have been working in, and sized to how much of it you have used, so the far end of a C is somewhere you can get to.
- Claim your space early and it lasts. The size comes from the widest you have ranged at any point in the round, and that only grows. One big stretch to each side early sets up every letter after it.
- A bigger letter is worth more. The points sit along it about a circle's width apart, so a big letter holds more of them — from two on a small 1 up to ten on a large X. Every circle reached is ten points; completing the letter adds fifty.
So it needs no floor space — but it does need a camera that stays put. If the phone slides, the whole picture moves at once and nothing stands out anywhere.
Which characters come up, and in what order
Normal mode draws from sixteen: the straight and simple shapes — C, L, O, T, U, V, X, Z — and the digits 0 to 7. Hard opens all twenty-six capitals and all ten digits. There are no lower-case letters in either.
The circles follow the order the character is taught, not the order that would be quickest to poke: a T is the stem downwards first, then the bar across the top. So the route between circles is the stroke order. Nothing is hidden either — a pale outline is there from the start, and the finished part inks in green along the letter's real curve rather than corner to corner, so an O ends as a circle and not an octagon.
A letter that will not come swaps itself out after fourteen seconds without a circle reached, eleven in hard; SPACE does the same on demand. Nothing is lost by moving on, because every circle reached is already scored. Hard shrinks the circles too, so more fit along the same letter — up to fifteen on a large one.
What a grown-up watching should know
A round is a flat sixty seconds after a three-count, and always runs the full minute. There are no lives and no way to be knocked out early — a letter that will not come is swapped, not failed. The score adds up as you go, so a slower child finishes the same round with a smaller number.
It is quiet. The backing track is a slow music-box pattern with no drums, and each circle reached gives a blip a little higher than the last, so a completed letter sounds like a rising run followed by four notes. M turns the track off and leaves the blips.
What it exercises is the route, not the recall. The character is on screen throughout and the point after next is already visible, so nothing has to be remembered. The child is following a shape in the correct order with one hand — the movement half of handwriting, without a pencil. A faint full-size character sits behind the outline too, for one who cannot read it yet.