A boat game for 5+ age group!
I was never much of a game developer, but recently my 5 year old son wanted to play a game so we decided to build one together.
It's a boat game, you basically steer a boat in an isometric 2d world, transporting passengers, cargo etc between ports.
As we designed it, the ideas just kept on coming. He made or directed a lot of the art inside of the game (even the audio), and we included friends and family as characters within the game.
A lot of fun to build - hilarious at times. I used Lua and LÖVE2D, building basically a game engine for an isometric world, so that took significantly more time than expected.
If you want to test it [1], please do, but keep in mind it's only in Norwegian, but I am sure most people would be able to figure it out as it's meant for age group 5 and up:
[1] https://apps.apple.com/no/app/b%C3%A5tspillet/id6791630382
At this point our entire extended family and their kids, grandchildren etc are actually playing this, so it's been super fun.
I'm super curious how you make the development process interesting for him. I get that a 5yo would be good at generating ideas but how do you then go "okay, now I'll need a week in front of a screen to build all these ideas" and not have him lose interest. Do you accelerate using LLMs?
Yeah, good question! We can do a lot of the creative process on paper, with his styrofoam models, and audio effects etc without even being near the computer. Then when I need to go ahead and write code, it's not going to be that interesting for him, but I've shown him how it works and how we can change stuff.
A lot of the very technical parts are done during the evenings after he's asleep, and I think that's okay, as it'll end up in a better result the next day so he can go and test and give further feedback.
Oh yes, I eventually did less hand coding and relied more on Claude Code to get the job done. I understand the game loop, the architecture and the algorithms, which I think is important. Don't hide that under the hood.
This is precisely why I'm building Breaka Club:
https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids
I also attempted to make a game with my eldest daughter initially. Unsurprisingly, she didn't want to sit there watching me code or drag things around in Godot's level editor.
Admittedly, I really need to make a new blog post showing the latest improvements brought about from the in school pilot I'm running weekly at the moment.
That's a really interesting approach. I love to see the kids sitting there and drawing on paper etc.
This looks really nice. Given the target age I imagine there's not a heap of text, so you could probably get away with LLM translations. Be sure to share it again in the coming months if you add English :)
I'd be happy to, although he doesn't speak English (yet) so the audio I guess will just remain as is, but the text could be quickly LLM translated.
Oh that sounds too extremely cool, have a 5yo brother, will definitely show this to him, wish you all the best on your journey :)
Thanks man! BTW for background, it was featured on kode24.no, a Norwegian coding site if you are able to read it: https://www.kode24.no/artikkel/lager-batspill-med-finn-erik-...
that's such a cool project and congrats on that article, looks nice. Good luck on your game-dev path :)