Making Games with My Son

I spent this evening with my 6 year old son building a game with the help of Claude Code.

I had seen videos of people using dictation with Claude Code but in the past I just couldn't get used to it. I felt like it lacked the precision and control that I was used to with typing (and lacked the ability to easily edit previous parts of the prompt). But this time I decided to give it a try since it would lower the barrier for my son to participate and I didn't need that precision.

I had Claude set up the initial project with Bun and Phaser. I've been using Bun on personal projects and appreciated its convenience. I was hoping to use it as the package manager (though I was hoping there wouldn't be too many dependencies) and bundler, but Claude elected to use Vite for bundling. Oh well, it worked out because I assume Vite made it easier for me to deploy the game to Vercel later.

For the actual vibe coding, I would ask my son what he wanted to see in the game and we would discuss and refine his ideas. Most of the time, I would be the one that would actually "speak" to Claude but sometimes my son would too. It was cute when he would whisper to me to ask a question without Claude hearing him. "What is his name?" Claude. "What is 20 times 10?" He wanted the coins to work a certain way.

I was also amused that I would often address Claude by name in my prompts like "Claude, can you add fireworks after the player touches the flag?" I'm pretty sure I don't usually address Claude by name in my typical interactions (usually typing) or when I was previously experimenting with dictation.

My son was very engaged throughout the session and seemed to enjoy the process of building the game. He was excited to see the game come to life and enjoyed playing the game as it evolved. He contributed ideas for collecting the coins, the flagpole at the end, the lava, the snow with penguins, the stomping mechanic. Clearly my son is heavily influenced by Mario. He still wants to add more to this game (a castle level with a boss), and he is looking forward to creating other games.

I haven't tried this with other models yet, but I enjoyed the experience with Claude. Claude is often credited as being more "human" and while I don't know if that's entirely true, I enjoyed the flourishes and creativity that Claude brought to our session. Claude threw in the bubbling effect of the lava, and the snowman and the snow falling from the sky. Claude was also asked to create the little song that plays when the player completes the game. My son and I would have still had a game without these additions but they were fun surprises.

What did I want my son to get out of this experience? I wanted him to exercise his creativity and get a sense of what sort of things are possible and not feel intimidated or limited. I don't need him to become a programmer (nor do I know what programming will be like in the future) but I think these sorts of AI tools will be part of his future and he should feel comfortable using them.

You can check out the game at https://games.tienshiao.org/. You are the blue block and your objective is to collect 20 coins and reach the flag at the end of the level. There are three levels with different themes and obstacles. Use the arrow keys to move and jump.