When I was young, I loved the idea of walkie-talkies. But I’m 36: do kids in 2013 care about the concept? Piiig Talk is an app hoping to find out.

Released by developer Piiig on Friday for iPhone and iPad, the app is pitched as a “digital walkie talkie for kids”, but before you get worried, it seems they’ve thought hard about potential safety issues around that.

“Piiig Talk allows kids to talk in real-time to their parents, siblings, relatives and friends who also have the app in a protected setting - over the same Wi-Fi network,” explains its App Store listing. “If no one is around, they can play with our voice distortion feature and talk to our built-in characters.”

A neat idea, ensuring that children who don’t have a friend or family member to hand can still have fun with the app. We also like the app’s voice messages feature, which turns your child’s words into an email – be warned, this could mean your inbox gets a sudden influx of mischievous messages!

Piiig Talk is a free download for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, with no in-app purchases. We’re looking forward to seeing what the developer comes up with in 2014 based on the strength of this and their first app, scientific sandbox Piiig Labs, which also came out recently and which is on our to-do list.

(Apologies, Piiig!)