Building games for my kid

My son River loves rockets. I wanted to make him a game that knew his name.

Play River's Rocket Works, or read what is in it. This post is about how it got made.

River's Rocket Works

I asked Claude for a rocket-building game in a browser, with two requirements: it had to call River by name, and it had to tell him he is a great rocket engineer.

What came back is a 3D game in one file. You pick tanks, engines and boosters, read a flight forecast, and then fly: countdown, staging, orbit, landing, docking. A voice narrates. It works with a controller, a keyboard or a touch screen.

Then I kept having ideas, and it grew from seven missions to twelve:

A Moon landing and a Mars rover delivery.
A rover race on Saturn's rings.
A storm rally on Jupiter, with a secret golden tornado.
A wormhole run through an asteroid field.
A race around the solar system starring the whole family.

In that last one River rides a star with a rainbow trail. Rachelle rides a unicorn. I drive a Viking ship pulled by two giant goats. Our white Lab, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, competes as herself. I asked for a screen where you can pick any of us, so River does not always have to be River.

The praise changes each time he finishes a mission: rocket builder, aerospace designer, mission commander.

What I learned about how it works

I gave specific directions, one round at a time. "Slow the ship to three quarters speed" works better than "make it easier."
Claude tested the game by playing it automatically from start to finish. Each time, it told me what it could not test: sound, a real controller and how it looks on a real screen. So I tested those.
One level I had named after a famous movie. Claude renamed it to avoid borrowing someone else's trademark, and kept my jokes.

Sloth Rocket Grand Prix

The other game is on this site and you can play it now. I wrote about it in its own post.

Where it falls short

The graphics are simple shapes, not artist-made models. And a game like this is never finished. There is always one more mission to add.

Try it

Ask your kid what the game should be. Then type exactly what they said.

Try this yourself

A prompt like the one I used. Paste it into any AI chat and fill in the brackets.

Make a game for my [age]-year-old, [name], that runs in a web browser as one file. [Name] said it should be about: [type exactly what they said].

It has to call [name] by name and tell them they are a great [rocket engineer]. It should work with a keyboard and a touch screen. When you're done, tell me what you could not test.

Part of the series 27 ways I actually use AI. Claude drafted this post from the record of our work together.