She Drew a Dragon-Dog. I Built It an AI.

Part 1 of a series on building an AI-powered game with a 7-year-old as the lead designer. My daughter handed me a drawing last week. Purple. Six legs. Completely confident about it. "This is the main character," she said. "She breathes ice AND fire because she can't decide." That was the design brief. That was the entire spec. Zero Tolerance for Menus Here's what I learned in the first 10 minutes of "user testing" with a 8-year-old: She doesn't read instructions. She clicks. She taps. She drags things that aren't draggable and ignores things that are. Every tutorial I've ever written for adults? Useless here. The game had to explain itself through play — or it wasn't a game, it was homework. Design principle #1: If it needs explaining, redesign it. The Naming Ceremony Before we wrote a single line of logic, we had to name everything. The dragon-dog: Zara (her choice, obviously). The world: Frostblaze Realm. The enemies: The Grey Blobs (because "they don't have feelings yet"). I've sat