playnext.fm

Podcast Archives - Board Game Design Lab · Gabe Barrett

Designing Games FOR and WITH Young Kids with Elan Lee

·1 hr 9 min·4 clips
'The Best Worst Ice Cream' turns odds into a visual lesson: kids see six red cards and choose red because the payoff is bigger.
Kids games take center stage. The host says the quiet part out loud: many preschool games feel like stale leftovers, and parents end up replaying them anyway. The guest keeps the goal practical. Working with his four-year-old daughter meant watching frustration in real time instead of waiting for neat feedback. That is a different kind of testing. A young kid may melt down over something they cannot explain, so the adult has to listen for the design problem under the reaction. The big discovery: kids can handle a winner. What stings is being named as the loser. For this age range, the guest wants games that celebrate success without leaving everyone else feeling defeated. Even Jenga gets a useful reframe. The person who made the last successful move wins, instead of saying the tower drop makes someone lose. Same table, same crash, different mood. The host presses on the example, and the point gets more practical: maybe the fall creates an action. The player who knocks it down might rebuild the tower, moving the moment from embarrassment into doing something. The business side is still part of the story. The guest mentions games reaching Target, Walmart, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Indigo. Demand sounds like the nicer problem: making enough games, not hunting for places willing to sell them.

As heard by us

A practical look at making preschool games feel like real games.

This conversation follows the practical work of making games for preschoolers without flattening them into chores. The core question is simple enough and harder than it looks: how do you build something a four-year-old can grasp while still making it feel like a real game?

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want better kids' games without the usual cardboard slog.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
Listen to the show on
Apple PodcastsSpotify
Play clips from this episodeMore from Podcast Archives - Board Game Design Lab