Guides for parents · Making games
AI game building for kids
Your kid describes a game in their own words. A kid-safe AI helper builds it in about a minute, and they play it right away. Then they keep changing it. Here's how it works, what they learn, and how we keep it safe.
How it works
- Describe. "A cat that dodges rain and catches fish." Their words, their idea.
- Build. The AI helper writes the game and the preview reloads. A first version takes about a minute.
- Play and change. "Make the cat faster." "Add a rainbow fish worth 10 points." One change at a time, play after each.
- Fix what breaks. Things go wrong, and that's good. Describing the bug is the lesson (prompt tips).
- Share, if you choose. A parent can send a finished game to the arcade. A real person plays it before it goes live.
What kids learn
- Prompting: describing an idea clearly enough for a computer to build it.
- Computational thinking: rules, loops, scores and levels, seen in a game they care about.
- Engineering habits: build, test, find the bug, fix it, try again.
- Design: what makes a game fair, fun and just hard enough.
How it stays safe
- The helper follows kid-safe rules and only works on your kid's game. It can't browse the internet or contact anyone.
- Emails, phone numbers and addresses are removed before anything is sent, and you can add your own banned words.
- Games run in a sealed preview that can't reach the internet.
- Kids sign in with a one-time code from you, never an email. They use a nickname, never a real name.
- You see every idea your kid types and every answer, and you can pause building or set a monthly limit. History is deleted after 90 days.
- Nothing is published unless you submit it and we approve it. How games get into the arcade
What it costs
The Family Plan is $79 a year for up to 6 kids, with 3,000 sparks of building a month for the whole family. A small change costs a few sparks; a big new feature about 50 to 150. The arcade stays free.