Choose your flavour
Who are you hunting with today?
Last year I made my nieces and nephews a 2D video game. This year it's a real console they can hold, with 3D games built from their ideas. This page is the build log. I'll keep adding to it until Christmas Day, and anything that would spoil the surprise stays hidden.
Why a console? Why not. Last year's game only ran on my laptop, so the kids played it on my laptop. It got dropped once and came back covered in food and drink. Dangerous game. This year they get something of their own that plugs into any screen.
There's a second reason. I want to see what the latest AI models can actually do. Running the same experiment every Christmas is a fun way to see how far they've come in a year. The bit I'm most excited about: how close can I get from a silly idea a six-year-old comes up with to a fully fledged game? None of this existed when I was a kid. It would have blown my mind.
Same rules as last year: every kid gets their own world, and the ideas come from them. On the list so far: something Mario Kart-ish, a nod to GoldenEye on the N64 and maybe a bit of Animal Crossing. Anything else is up to the kids. I'm keeping as much as I can human-made and free of copyright problems.
What done looks like on Christmas Day: seven extremely excited nieces and nephews fighting over who has the controller.
Milestones
Everything that's going into the console. A few parts are blanked out until the kids have opened it.
The brains
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
A small, cheap computer that plugs into any screen with HDMI. Everything runs on this.
Controllers
2 × Pi Hut retro gamepads
SNES-style USB controllers. Two to start with. Maybe four. Maybe all seven, if the fighting gets bad enough.
The magic controller
A wand I built from scratch
A prototype from our new game, codename WIZARD. Some of the games will be playable with it. I'm excited and slightly nervous to see what the kids make of it.
The case
Printed on a Bambu Lab A1
A custom 3D-printed case. The design is still to be decided, and it'll stay hidden until Christmas.
Secret until Christmas
The developer
Claude Code (Max plan)
This year's AI does the heavy lifting on the code. At £75 a month, I want it to stretch as far as it can.
The games
Waiting on the kids' orders
One world each again, and every idea comes from them. Revealed on Christmas Day.
Secret until Christmas
Newest first. 1 update so far.
Last Christmas I built my nieces and nephews a 2D video game. They loved it. It was so addictive that I got in trouble with my sisters. Fun uncle duties can go a bit too far.
This year I'm building them a whole console. It runs on a Raspberry Pi 3, it'll have its own custom 3D-printed case, it plugs into any screen and it comes with two SNES-style controllers. There's a third controller too: a "magic" one I've built from scratch for our new game.
So far I've got the Pi, the two controllers and a Claude Max plan. Development hasn't started yet. I'm waiting for the kids to put their orders in for the games.
Tiddlypeeps is the 2D game I made them last Christmas: seven worlds, one per kid. It's free to play in your browser.
