https://github.com/michaeldibernardo/bugs
A "game" I made for my 2.5 year old niece
https://github.com/michaeldibernardo/bugs
game games insects kids
Last synced: 7 months ago
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A "game" I made for my 2.5 year old niece
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/michaeldibernardo/bugs
- Owner: MichaelDiBernardo
- Created: 2024-08-25T20:45:27.000Z (about 1 year ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2024-08-29T19:05:10.000Z (about 1 year ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-01-24T06:48:32.631Z (9 months ago)
- Topics: game, games, insects, kids
- Language: JavaScript
- Homepage: https://bugs.mikedebo.com
- Size: 13 MB
- Stars: 1
- Watchers: 1
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
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Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# Nora Looks For Bugs
## TL;DR
I made a game about finding insects for my toddler niece. It's [here](https://bugs.mikedebo.com).
## The Story
My 2.5-year-old niece likes insects. Last week, I saw her zooming into photos of bugs on her mom's phone, and I had an idea for her first "videogame."
I thought she might enjoy a simple game where she could look under rocks for bugs. But, to keep it surprising, sometimes there should be non-bugs under the rocks. I wanted it to have a geocities-era blursed vibe to it.
My partner decided that the surprises should be emojis of our niece’s favorite things.
I chose to make it a progressive web app, because that way my niece could recognize the app on her mom's phone by the bug icon (she can't read yet.)
You can find the game at [https://bugs.mikedebo.com](https://bugs.mikedebo.com). Make sure to ask your parents if it's OK first.
I'd love to share videos of my niece playing it for the first time, but for obvious reasons I won't be doing that. There was a lot of excited shrieking involved, which made me very happy.
## Instructions
- Scroll around the forest floor and click on rocks to find surprises
- The surprises sometimes peek out from under the rocks for maximum suspense!
- You can hurl the rocks by touching/clicking them to reveal the surprise beneath
- Uncle Mike will announce the insects; Auntie I announces the other surprises. (Auntie I doesn't like bugs.)
- Clicking the surprise will make more funny sounds.
Enjoy!
## Things that surprised me
- Nora is much better at scrolling than I expected! I originally made the map quite small assuming she'd have a hard time navigating, but I was wrong.
- I thought she'd like the surprises, but she seeming dgaf about them. It's all about the bugs.
- Older kids also appear to appreciate the game. I thought it would be too dumb for them.
- It's liberating to make things for pre-literate kids. Eliminating text reduces options by a lot!
- I realized that I've made several games tailored to specific individuals. I guess it's becoming somewhat of a thing. I don't consider myself a "game-maker", but I find making games for specific people is quite satisfying. I can go from idea to "gift-sized" game very quickly.
## Known issues
I wanted the map to start focused on the center of the scrollable area, but the combination of myself and claude-3.5-sonnet could not figure it out. If you do, please let me know. I'm sure it's simple, but learning more about CSS was an anti-goal of this project for me.
## Assets
- Forest floor texture from [here](https://www.texturemax.com/forest-floor-terrain-0006/)
- Progressive web app template from [here](https://github.com/nikkifurls/simplepwa)
- Bugs from [here](https://www.cleanpng.com/)
- Bug icon from [here](https://www.vecteezy.com/)
- All voices and sound effects courtesy of Uncle Mike and Auntie I. Thanks to Ms Rachel for "inspiration."
Thanks to [Cursor](https://www.cursor.com/) and claude-3.5-sonnet for all the help. Claude, I'm sorry I rewrote 95% of your code. It's not you, it's me.