TL;DR: My colleagues at Automattic just launched Spacefast, and building with it alongside Emma and Heidi has been a lot of fun, mostly because I got to do it with them and spark their creativity. They told me what games they wanted to play, and we built them the same day, played them, fixed what was broken, and shared them with a link.
I want my girls to see technology as something they make with, not just something they tap and scroll. Turns out the gap between “I wish there was a game where…” and actually playing it is a lot smaller than it used to be.
I built everything with Sid, an AI agent powered by Meta’s Muse, and published it all on Spacefast.
The Adventure Park
We started with a park for the two of them: five games in one place (a roller coaster, a dance party, a storybook, Balloon Pop, and an Ice Cream Stand). Finish a game, earn a stamp in your Park Passport. Get all five and you’re an Adventure Park Champion.
The first version wasn’t close. The fixes came from them actually playing it, with me sending screenshots from my phone along the way. Make the coaster something you can actually ride. Ditch the scroll menu and let the passport stamps be the navigation. Turn their photo into a cartoon and put it up top. Nothing got fixed from a theory.
Emma’s Fashion Showdown
The second game was all Emma. She voice-texted me a note describing the exact game she wanted. I told her to be very specific, and she was: design your own fashion person (girls and boys both get to look handsome and beautiful), then face a rival on the runway. Points turn into coins, and three round wins takes the jewel.
The first version of the game was literally a copy/paste of her text. That was the whole spec, and it was enough.
The one fix that really mattered: the boy and girl characters looked basically the same, and Sid’s first attempt was so subtle we couldn’t tell the difference. So we said so, and it got done properly. Spiky hair and a red cap for him, long hair and a bow for her. Every outfit and color is still open to both, exactly how Emma wanted it.
Spacefast was the easy part
Each game went up on Spacefast, got a link I could just send, and we played a round on the live page to make sure it worked. Later we moved everything into the girls’ own Spacefast team. Yes, they have their own team now.
That’s the whole idea behind it. As Batuhan put it in the launch post, “You shouldn’t have to sign up for 5 different services to make something on the web!” Hosting, database, domains, and sharing are just there, and the agent can drive all of it.
A home for all of it
Then we built a Game Hub: one link, their cartoon at the top, and a card with a Play button for each game. There’s a “More games on the way!” slot waiting. From here a new game isn’t a new project, it’s just a new card.
And since every good game studio needs a real address, they’ve got their own domain now: emmaandheidi.com.
What I’m taking from this
Making things on the web is shifting from writing code to describing what you want. My daughters are learning that early, and they don’t think of it as programming. To them it’s telling Dad what game they want and playing it later that day.
It was a fun learning experience for them, especially my seven year old, and really got her creative side exploring what she could think of next.
Play them
- Game Hub: emmaandheidi.com
- Adventure Park: emmaandheidi.com/adventure-park
- Fashion Showdown: emmaandheidi.com/fashion-showdown
