Last Saturday morning, my kids asked me to make them a game. Not download one, but make one. They'd seen me working with code on my screen and had this idea that I could just whip up a game on the spot. So I figured, why not try? ## The idea I opened Claude and started describing what I wanted: a simple browser-based game where you're a spaceship dodging falling asteroids, collecting stars for points. Nothing fancy, just something a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old could play with arrow keys and understand immediately. ## The prompting I started broad and then refined. My first prompt was something like: ``` Build me a simple HTML/JavaScript game. A spaceship at the bottom of the screen moves left and right with arrow keys. Asteroids fall from the top at random positions. Stars also fall occasionally. Hitting an asteroid ends the game. Catching a star adds 10 points. Display the score at the top. Make it colorful and fun. ``` Claude gave me a complete, working HTML file on the first try. I opened it in the browser and it ran. The spaceship moved, asteroids fell, stars appeared. But it was too fast for small hands, and the spaceship was just a triangle. So I iterated. "Make the spaceship a rocket emoji. Slow the asteroid speed by half. Make the stars yellow and bigger. Add a 'Play Again' button when the game ends." Each round of changes took about 30 seconds to describe and another 30 for Claude to regenerate the updated file. After about five rounds of back-and-forth, maybe 20 minutes total, I had a game that felt right. I added one more touch: "When you catch a star, play a short chime sound." Claude added the Web Audio API code for a simple tone. Done. ## What the kids thought They loved it. My 6-year-old played for about 15 minutes straight, which in kid-attention-span terms is an eternity. My 4-year-old needed help with the arrow keys but was thrilled just watching the rocket move. They both kept asking me to change things, "make the asteroids red," "add a second rocket," and I could make those changes in real time. That part blew their minds more than the game itself. ## The takeaway The whole thing, from "Dad, make us a game" to two kids happily playing, took about 30 minutes. I didn't write a single line of code by hand. I described what I wanted in plain English and refined it iteratively. This is what vibe coding looks like in practice: you steer the direction, the AI handles the implementation, and you both converge on something that works. It's not production software. It's a toy. But it's a toy my kids asked for and got, in the time it takes to make breakfast. --- Related: [[life/Teaching Kids with Tech|Teaching kids with tech]] ← [[Lab|Back to /lab]]