When I was young, I didn’t really appreciate Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when my class studied it in English. Possibly because we were a bunch of schoolboys more interested in sniggering at whoever had to read Juliet or the Nurse, rather than engaging with the play.

Here’s a thought: perhaps an app may be a good way to introduce modern-day children to Romeo and Juliet in their own homes, without a chortling audience of oiks. If so, Romeo + Juliet by Timbuktu may be just the thing.

Released for iPhone and iPad, it’s a combination of text, animation and music telling “the most unlucky love story of all times” with a few mini-games thrown in to reinforce the plotlines.

Children will be preparing for a masquerade ball, taking Juliet to the altar, fighting a duel, making doves fly and choosing ingredients for a potion. “Serve the potion to Romeo and see what happens!” chirps the App Store listing.

(Don’t assume you know the answer, by the way: the idea here is to change the ending by choosing the right missing ingredient.)

It’s the illustration style that made this take on the Bard’s great romance stand out for us: like previous Timbuktu apps we’ve seen (The Nutcracker, for example) it looks fresh and original.

Romeo + Juliet - by Timbuktu costs £2.99 for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store.