Retro games and 4 year olds
Homemade typing games, the fear of failure, and old DOS games
I’ve been building computer games for Z for a year now.
Thought I’d write up some stories and observations on it.
My theory is that she’s going to be exposed to mainstream stuff by sheer existence. She sings Frozen and talks about Anna and Elsa constantly, even though I don’t know when she’s ever seen it. When she gets in a car her first question is “Can I listen to Taylor Swift?” She doesn’t need purposeful exposure to any of these things any more than being taught to breathe.
So I try to expose her to things that she might not normally be exposed to. Ghibli movies, “real” computers, urban adventures, ska, you know, that kind of stuff.
And recently… old DOS games that I grew up with.
She’s 4. She knows she has a computer at my house and where it’s hidden.
It’s hidden because that makes it more fun.
She opens her MacBook Air (not that easy for 4 years old fingers, the front is very thin), clicks her name, types her password.
She still gets confused that she can’t touch the screen and has to use a trackpad.
There’s a web browser with games I’ve made for her, for now pretty simple ones where she’s learning basic typing, sight words, and numerical sequences.
She knows that on computers we do “business” though she hasn’t made the connection that money is related.
Z: “I want ice cream!”
Me: “We don’t have ice cream.”
Z: “Ok, I’ll go buy some ice cream.”
Me: “Where will you get money to buy it?”
Z: “I’ll get in the car and drive to the supermarket and buy some monies.”
Before I made her any games myself, I tried an assortment of games for kids and other apps (see the appendix below of “Other Games and Apps We Tried”), but I couldn’t find anything that really captivated her attention in a sustaining educational way.
The Typing Game
The first game I made for her was in the mountains in Sept 2024.
I noticed she enjoyed typing on the computer, but it was just nonsense in a notes app. Fun, but not all that educational. Eventually it would descend into her pounding the keys in excitement and/or frustration.
Claude 3 had just been released, and I’ve been making websites using LLMs for a couple years now mostly just for testing capabilities (for instance, “AI codes an analog clock” got 3m views in Dec 2022, because it felt like magic back then!)
The first iteration of the typing game was just big pixelated words on the screen where if she typed the right letter it highlighted it, with a “good job” popping up when she got a full word right.
But there were no consequences — before too long, she realized she could just hit random letters on the keyboard and make progress instead of finding the correct letter.
So I added something she talks about all the time — money — using big money bag emojis on the left side of the screen. That was the carrot. But when she got a letter wrong, I made the screen flash red and a money would be taken away.
The first time she used the new version she hit a wrong key, the red flashed, her eyes got wide and she turned to me and whispered “Oh no I lost a money.”
The game has really held up. She still plays it, and she’s gotten very good at it. I refresh the words occasionally, and they’re all words she says or knows, so she gets a toddler chuckle out of them.
—> Play the typing game here, if you want
Z: “Josh, can you put me up there?”
(points further up the tree)
Me: “No, I want you to learn to climb there yourself.”
Z: “But _____ puts me up there.”
Me: “And I’d like you to learn for yourself so you can climb there whenever you want.”
Z: (cries)
(one week later)
Z: “JOSH! LOOK! I climbed to the top all by myself! I want you to be proud of me!”
Introducing Scarcity … Typing Game: Thanksgiving Edition
For Thanksgiving 2024 we had some friends come into town so I thought it was a good opportunity to refresh the word list with new names and festive words.
I also wanted to test a concept of speeding things up to create motivation to type faster, but more accurate.
She loved the new words; the race she found stressful.
I had made it about half the speed I thought would work for her, but it needed to be slower. I made that a variable so it was easy to adjust down (I try to always prompt to make settings like this easy to change in a config section).
Even with it slow, she would just watch the turkey win and get discouraged.
Z: “I’m just gonna let the turkey win.”
Me: “Don’t you want to win?”
Z: “No, the turkey can win. Can we play another game?”
Even though she is very focused on “winning” when we race in person, it didn’t translate to the typing game (yet?). She seems to be more interested in momentum / completing things so I will try some new things in that direction.
Complete Failure: The Number Game
Typing and letters and sight words have been improving, but she’s not as interested in numbers. And I get it; numbers are boring. Abstract. Confusing. With the added annoyance of people asking you to add them together. When you add letters together the letters persist; when you add numbers together they transmogrify into new ones.
Could I recreate the success of the typing game but with numbers?
The only time she loves numbers is when she weaponizes the concept of zero if someone says she’s not going to get (insert treat) after being mean to someone (usually, me).
Z: “I WANT ZERO. ZERO ICE CREAM. ZERO HUGS. NEVER, EBER.”
I started this one with a big mistake: starting the code from scratch. Why did I do this? That’s stupid in almost any century, but especially in this one. It meant I had to keep adding all my previous features one at a time, and not in a way that always matched. Doomed to fail from the start, truly.
Plus, I added an entire new concept: listening. The game says the number, then she has to type it. It’s a completely new experience.
She played it for maybe 10 minutes, then it was relegated to the dustbin of history.
Numbers will require more “fun” — letters can be made fun just by arranging them in sequences like “chicken nugget” — but numbers aren’t the same way.
—> Play this failure of a game here
Had I ever had fun with numbers as a kid? A memory came to mind. It gave me an idea…
Looking Up: Zizi’s Number Game
aka Number Munchers for Toddlers
I did a stint at a Catholic school. I think it was 4th grade, they had a computer lab filled with a couple rows of Apple II’s. We played Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and they tried to teach us programming with LOGO (the turtle graphics thing).
By that time I was already a PC kid that thought I was above all that Apple stuff since I had taught myself programming in BASIC and batch file scripting.
And then there was Number Munchers.
I’ve always been bad at math, and so I really hated this game. It was hard. It’s still hard for me! Emily laughs because I can’t even remember gate numbers at airports. My brain is a black hole for numbers.
Still, I’ve always loved the design of the game. Like an educational Pac-Man.
It doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and the old version is way too hard for a 4 year old, so I made a clone that instead of eating prime numbers (which I still honestly have no comprehension of) I made it so that numbers must be eaten in sequence.
I had to recreate the Muncher, so might as well make it pink:
All in all, it’s probably the best looking game I’ve made so far, with custom VGA-style backgrounds:
I went back and forth on making a monster (aka troggle in muncherland), so I have one emerge on the second level.
Ends up, the monster was a hit and a big motivator for her to get to level 2!
And, of course, if you get eaten, there needs to be a custom end screen…
I haven’t packaged this game up and uploaded it yet; but I will soon.
Unfortunately I got sidetracked trying to do muncher and background animations; I really wanted the castle flags to fly. I shouldn’t have let this slow me down, but I did, and I lost momentum. Still, they’re cool, if I ever get them in there:
KidPix
An app that often comes up when discussing old retro games is KidPix. This is not one I used myself but I saw that KidPix was public domain’d and someone created a browser-based version of it: JSKidPix.
I played with it for a bit and didn’t find it overly intuitive… but, maybe it would work better for her brain?
I showed her the letter stamps first, she wanted to do each one in a new color (still getting confused she can’t touch the screen to change colors) — until it devolved into jumbled letters the same color and then she shut the screen announcing “I’m done with this game.”
Second time was similar, but then I showed her the object stamps and that kept her interest longer: she started telling stories with them.
Maybe third time is the charm?
The Incredible Machine
Z’s brain is very … how do I say it … magical? I call it brain mushrooms, and I mean it with love.
When she talks, I see her make an overwhelming amount of visual connections and it’s just as likely that a next word will be DINOSAUR or PRINCESS or something from a month ago or … anything really, as much as it might be to any relationship to the word before.
(With LLMs we call this “temperature” — the randomness of a word generated after another. Too low of temperature and it’s flat and repetitive and robotic; too high gets chaotic and hallucinogenic.)
A year ago or so she was stuck in a repetitive creative phase; she would say the same things again and again. So we started playing “the story game,” where we tell a story after dinner and the other person has to keep going from where the other person left off. (Though I “came up” with it one evening, I’m sure it must be the oldest game of all time, tho I don’t remember playing it myself.)
At first her story would be almost exactly the same: a princess meeting a dragon; the same thing unfolding. But each time she handed it off, new elements were introduced, until she started copying making larger story changes.
Josh: “Once upon a time, in a land far away…”
Z: “YOU SAY THAT EVERY NIGHT”
Me: “Your turn”
Z: “There was a princess and a castle and a dragon and big teeth MOM’S TURN”
Mom: “And the princess worked very hard and was always learning and growing”
Z: “JOSH’S TURN”
Me: “And the princess only had one tooth because she never brushed them…”
Now a year later she’s A+ at the story game, but still learning logical sequences.
As I was thinking about what old games might help with this I remembered one I loved as a kid: The Incredible Machine.
It’s an old Sierra game where you have a goal (“pop the balloon”) but in order to do it you might have to drop a ball onto a fan, which then blows the balloon, then place scissors in front of the balloon. Etc. All logic and prediction.
In order to play it I installed a DOS emulator (I used DOSBox-X) and then downloaded the software from an abandonware site because I’ve long since gotten rid of the floppy disk this came on (and even if I had it, I have no way of using floppies!)
The game is definitely over her abilities. I have to help her a lot. She doesn’t really understand where to place things or why. But she’s starting to get it, and I think it’s a really good tool to teach sequential logic and cause-and-effect, which, let’s be honest, 4 year olds tend to lack. (And some adults, too.)
In this game, I noticed a new personal behavior: I got nervous I wouldn’t know the answer. We were both experiencing the game for basically the first time, since I didn’t remember any of the puzzles. I felt insecure — I didn’t want to fail in front of her!
Which is silly; it’s good for her to see me fail. It’s good for her to watch me — like her — try new things, struggle, and persevere. This is more observational as it’s the first time I felt that.
What’s Next?
I don’t usually plan anything more than a couple months out, but here’s what’s on my mind…
I plan to keep at it on The Incredible Machine as long as she’s interested. I’m going to finish and upload the Number Munchers game. Try Townscaper. Try some more old Sierra games like Mixed Up Mother Goose. Watch Ponyo.
When she learns how to read, I want to make a text adventure game for her.
And who knows what else… mainly I just want to have fun, play with the latest AI tools, and experience some nostalgia — while she’s also having fun while learning.
If you have suggestions, would love to hear them in the comments.
Appendix: Other Games and Apps We Tried
A few other things I tried early 2024 as we started exploring “iPad time” together:
GarageBand: I’d go to the virtual instruments and she’d bang on the drums and play the guitar. Fun, but too advanced without someone who has patience to better teach things like rhythm. But this was a solid favorite for 5 minutes at a time.
Khan Academy: A lot of parents love this app, but I thought it was dumb. Zizi liked a couple of the things but it got repetitive quick and didn’t seem like she was actually learning anything.
DALL-E 3 via ChatGPT: She liked this, but with a delay of 10 seconds or so per request at the time (early 2024), she got bored pretty quickly and it didn’t last.
Stable Diffusion Real-time: This was a hit! FAL put a demo of this up (only for a couple days) and it was incredible — rendering prompts in 500ms so you’d see things as they were typed. Or in our case, voice-to-text. Lots of dinosaur princesses with kitties and sparkles. But when it stopped being free I forgot about it :(
Match Factory: A free matching game. This was good for improving pattern recognition, and she was into it for a while, but it eventually waned as the game got more complex and time based. She really gets discouraged at time-based things.
ABC Mouse: This was an expensive subscription for something that I didn’t think was very good. She didn’t love it and I didn’t either so I cancelled after the first month.
Honestly, I couldn’t find anything that really captivated her attention in a sustaining educational way.
Inspirational stuff!
My oldest is 11 so maybe this won’t be a great suggestion for Z, but we just discovered this iPad app called simply piano (https://www.hellosimply.com/). It gamifies learning piano. My daughter started in at the beginning of jan and she is obsessed. Plays for hours a day. In a month she is playing full songs and has asked if she can busk at our local farmers market. Games are the most powerful learning devices!
Very cool, Josh! It made me try to remember games my kids played when they were little. Of course, they probably involved a lot of 🚚, 🚂 and 🦖!