Watching my 6yr old design a universe
My son can't really type yet. In one week he talked his way into seven video games and a city inside the sun.
In one week, my 6-year-old son Lachlan designed seven video games, including a monster-catching RPG with its own solar system and a jail for the bad guys. He can't really type yet. He didn't need to.
He talked, Claude built it, he played it, and then he talked some more. Over about 200 requests I watched him figure out that the thing in his head could show up on a screen, usually within a few minutes.
It started with a typing game
The goal was modest: a fun way for Lachlan to practice the keyboard. Claude made Froggy Typing, where a frog eats flies when you hit the right letter.
It lasted about one round. "This is a little boring because he's doing a good job," I reported. Then it was too hard. Then he asked the real question: could we just make other games?
Within a few days he had a whole arcade of original characters on one launcher page:
| Game | Inspired by | His one-line pitch |
|---|---|---|
| Froggy Typing | Typing practice | The original homework |
| Bun Bun's Big Hop | Classic platformers | Jump over things, more levels please |
| Bun Bun Kart | Kart racing | A driving game |
| Critter Kart Cup | Kart racing | Like the last one, but a little bit hard |
| Spiky Quest | Adventure games | Dodging spikes and exploring |
| Critter Catchers | Monster-catching RPGs | The one that ate the week |
| Game World | Everything | Every game in the world, except scary ones |
That last row is his request word for word. It turned into ten mini-games, none of them scary.
Critter Catchers: the game that ate the week
His first ask was simple: "Can you make a game similar to Pokemon?" Claude built Critter Catchers, a little top-down RPG where you walk around a town, battle wild critters, catch them in friend bubbles, and earn badges. The creatures are all original. He calls them Pokemon anyway, and the game doesn't mind.
That was day one. Here's roughly where it ended up, and every piece of it started as something he said out loud:
Everything becomes a King
Claude would invent a creature with a perfectly good name. Lachlan would rename it, then rename it again, usually on the way up.
| Claude named it | Lachlan's first rename | Where it ended up |
|---|---|---|
| Prismo | Rainbow Pup | Rainbow King |
| ZipZap | ZapPup | Zap King |
| Elementor | Lachlan | Mega Lachlan |
| An overpowered, super ginormous critter | King of Pokemon | Ultra King of Pokemon |
| Cosmo Colossus | King of the World | Super Mega King of the World |
| Bubbo | Bubble Splash | Bubble Splash (some things are perfect) |
The titles stack. A 6-year-old doesn't pick between Super, Mega, Ultra and King when he can have all of them. The strongest critter is named after him: he renamed the elemental powerhouse "Lachlan," then asked if it could evolve to be as strong as the King.
Places get the same treatment. There's the Super Secret Mega Base, the Super Ginormous House, and the Biggest Palace Ever. A villain called the Doom King showed up, and his next question was "Is there a Doom King's King?"
He also has a very clear sense of rank. When the biggest critter got a throne, he asked for "a smaller throne" for the one just below it.
Always bigger
Adults design games by scoping down. Lachlan has never scoped anything down in his life.
The Champion's House got a throne. Then giant guards. Then rainbow guards with swords and ninja stars. Then a plant you walk into that drops you into a secret base, with a ladder out and a trap door "so nobody can get in from the ladder." Then a portal hidden behind a painting. Then a room with "thousands of diamonds and gold." Then a rocket ship.
The rocket went to the moon. The moon got a mine, the mine had ores, and the ores paid a little builder named Bolt to build bases. Then he asked for wings, flew off the moon, and kept going:
"Can you please make a glass tunnel that leads to the sun so that I can have a whole entire city inside of that?"
"Can you please make a base inside of a star thousands and thousands of miles away?"
By the end he had bases on Saturn, Mars, Pluto, and three dwarf planets, a water park inside a giant house, a city inside the sun, and a palace on a faraway star.
I didn't expect how much of his thinking is about security. Nearly every new place came with guards that "only let me and my pals in." He also cares a lot about the world making sense, even when the world is absurd. Pluto was too cold, so he asked to make it "a little warmer." When he sat in his throne, he wanted his pal to sit in its own throne too.
After all of that, his latest request was to dig down into the ground, one block at a time.
It's not about winning (it's about winning)
My favorite request of the whole week:
"Can you make Cosmo Colossus, the biggest power in the universe, easy to defeat? And if you defeat it, it adds to your team."
So the biggest power in the universe should be easy to beat, and then it should join you.
It would be easy to read that as a kid who just wants to win, but the rest of the week doesn't fit. He asked for "a giant hard boss. Not impossible, but you can still defeat it, but it's really hard." A few minutes later: "This guy's a little too hard. Can you please make him a little less hard?" He kept setting his own goals, like "If I earn 2 more badges, can Rainbow King evolve?", and then going off to meet them. Nobody told him to earn anything.
What he wanted was for the ending to match the picture in his head: the boss on his team, in his palace, sitting on a throne he designed. That changed how I think about his games. He's using them to make a story come true, and beating the boss is just how the story ends.
He also has a strong moral code. He built a jail for invading bad guys and was firm that "it cannot be one of my pals that I put in jail." He locked up four Doom Kings and asked for a button to release them, adding, "but I'm probably never going to do that." Not long after, he let them out and made them his castle bodyguards. Redemption arc, age 6.
"Please go really, really, really, really fast"
This became the running joke. Lachlan asked Claude to go faster more than 40 times, often tacked onto the end of a totally different request: "Oh, and I forgot to say this. Please go really, really, really, really, really, really, really fast."
A 6-year-old has no idea how long it takes to build a city inside the sun. It already exists in his head, so he can't see why the screen is still empty. The answer that worked every time was "You're already going super fast! Close the game and open it again." He'd reload, and it would be there.
The bumps
He asked for Pikachu, then Eevee, then tried renaming a critter to Pikachu. Claude said no each time, kindly, and offered an original instead. He named it ZapPup and moved on. Same thing when he asked "Bob the Builder" to rebuild his base, which is how the moon builder became Bolt. Once the character was his, he didn't care about the brand.
Early on, the game narrated everything: "You sit in your royal throne, Lachlan!" He asked, very politely, "Can you not say, like, a happy little plant?" Kids can tell when they're being talked down to, even by a video game.
Then he hit New Game by accident and lost all his pals. "I didn't mean to restart the game." Midweek I was worried a reset like that would blow up our entire household, so I was pretty stoked when Claude rebuilt his pals perfectly. It also added a backup save and a "Bring back my old game" button so it can't happen again.
Things broke. "What happened to Earth? It's just blank." Earth went blank after a rocket trip, a base came back empty, and digging too deep once turned the screen solid green. He reported each one like a QA tester, saying what he did and what he saw. Claude found and fixed every one, and after the green screen it added a safety net that rescues him if the game ever freezes.
By the end he took the mic and was talking to Claude himself on voice. "Wait, what?" "I'm there." "Wow, I see a lot more gems." Listening to him get walked through digging his first hole, one step at a time, was really amazing.
How to try this with your own kid
You don't need to code. I barely touched a keyboard. Here's what worked (you can hand this list straight to your AI):
- Start small, and educational if you can. We started with typing practice. A tiny game with a purpose gets them hooked on the loop.
- They talk, you type (or use voice). Pass along their exact words. Their phrasing is half the fun, and the AI handles "um, like, can you make the thing" just fine.
- Let it be absurd. A city inside the sun? Sure. Stay out of it and let the AI figure out how to make it work.
- Play after every change. One request, reload, play. It happens naturally, but if your kid gets hung up on details, have them play a bit before building more.
- Have them name everything. Swap any famous character for one they invent.
- Let them set the difficulty. Start easy. They'll ask for harder, then a little less hard. Both are fine.
- Protect their work. A save button and a backup help a lot. Losing a world they built hurts more than you'd expect.
- Keep it to small doses. Screen time limits still apply, and the universe will be there tomorrow.
A starter prompt you can paste into Claude:
Build a simple browser game for my [age]-year-old. Big buttons, very little reading, nothing scary, and easy to win at first. Use original characters. They'll tell me what to add next, and I'll pass it along.
What I'm taking away
Kids have always had giant worlds in their heads, and we've spent Lachlan's whole life wishing we could see his. This week we did, because the time between him describing something and seeing it on a screen dropped to a few minutes.
Nobody taught him to code. What he picked up is that describing something out loud can get it built, and when it breaks, saying what he saw gets it fixed.
He's currently underground on the moon, digging one block at a time. He'd like it to go faster.