A lot of the free games on your kid's tablet are built to keep them
playing: a video ad that cuts into the round, a cartoon character nudging them to buy coins.
This one has three short levels (a run, a soccer match and a kart race),
then it says THE END. It has no ads, nothing to buy and no sign-up. You can build one like it with your kid tonight.
← → or A D to run · Space to jump · stomp a dust bunny for a big bounce (hold Space for more)
Nothing on this page watches your kid play. Once it loads, it makes
no outside calls, runs no ads or analytics, and saves nothing. The robot is drawn with
rectangles, and your browser makes every beep on the spot.
We made this on a tangent while mocking up our basement remodel. I was building a
3D walk-through of the plan with an AI, and the laptop on the desk in it opened a
tiny game. I'm a physical therapist and I don't write code. The AI wrote every
line.
When I asked whether the game could live on this site, it got three levels and a
start button. After my playtests, level two became soccer and level three a kart race.
The whole game sits in one file, and the prompt below asks an AI for the same kind of
file, built around your kid's ideas.
Want to see the basement? Follow the build on my
Instagram and
YouTube.
Build one with your kid
Open whatever AI chat you already use and paste this in. Let your kid
answer its questions. Some AI chats can run the game right in the chat window. If
yours can't, save the answer on a computer as game.html and open it in a browser.
My kid and I want to build a tiny video game together tonight, and neither of us knows how to code. My kid is [your kid's age] years old.
Step 1: Ask my kid three questions, one at a time, and wait for each answer. Who is the hero? What does the hero collect? What does the hero have to dodge?
Step 2: Write the whole game as ONE html file we can save and open in a web browser. No images, no libraries, nothing loaded from the internet: draw everything with simple shapes on a canvas. Arrow keys and space to play, plus big on-screen buttons so it works on a phone. Three short levels, then a THE END screen. Keep the code short and simple.
Step 3: After the code, show us one number we can change ourselves, like how high the hero jumps, and quote the exact line it's on.
A good answer is one block of code that starts with <!DOCTYPE html>, ends with </html>, and works the first time we open it. If it doesn't, we'll paste the error back to you.
Washington or Dakota County, Minnesota. Off-market, or straight from the
owner — I'm the buyer, not a middleman passing it along. Woodbury, Cottage
Grove, Hastings, Stillwater, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville.
If that's you, or you know somebody quietly thinking about selling, I'll lay out
your options — all of them, including the ones I don't make a dime on.
Nothing to sign, no walkthrough unless you ask.
That was free and nothing here sits behind an email. If it was
useful, here's the whole exchange: send it to one or two people who'd use it
too. That's it. I'm trusting you with it, you pass it on.
Want the next one before anyone else? I'm building an interest
list — no selling, no sequence, your address goes nowhere.
Exactly what that means, in plain words.
The list itself isn't open yet — I'm still setting it up, and
I'd rather say that than put up a box that doesn't work. The ask above stands
either way, and it's the one that matters. If you want to tell me what to build
next, my DMs are open.