“The hardest part was waiting 10–15 minutes for Claude to implement everything.” The 10-year-old vibecoder, together with her dad, created the game “The Adventures of the Seal Family” over the weekend, which helps teach English and more. How it was

How the idea came about

Oleksandr Sukhomlyn , Marketing Team Lead at CRMiUM with over 15 years of experience in digital, uses artificial intelligence in his work every day — from building automations and dashboards to creating landing pages and hosting webinars. In an effort to teach his 10-year-old daughter Lada not only to consume content, but also to create her own products in a rapidly changing world, Oleksandr decided to implement an interesting project with her — to develop her own game.

The schoolgirl already had basic IT experience: at school she mastered Scratch, created presentations in Canva, and used ChatGPT to find ideas.

During a walk together, her father suggested creating a game, and the girl happily jumped on the idea. The theme was chosen right away: the adventures of soft toy seals (with names like Whitebeard, Pilmen, Shchebenko, Khlib, and others), about whom Lada and her friend Eva were constantly making up stories.

“Just on a walk, we asked ChatGPT what ideas there were to implement such a game. Lada told her story about seals and all the names in the chat and asked to suggest what exactly could be done based on this idea. He gave several options, Lada liked them, and we decided to try it. Then I asked to summarize everything that Lada dictated and collect all the ideas into one clear text,” says Oleksandr.

Developing a voice AI tool for my daughter

So that his daughter could work on the game independently and not waste time on slow typing, Oleksandr developed a technical solution. Since Claude Code does not recognize Ukrainian through voice input, the father created a special program for language recognition under macOS.

For his Windows work PC, Oleksandr created an application based on the free Whisper model from OpenAI, and for the Mac, which Lada worked on, he adapted the open application Handy with the Parakeet V3 model. The father optimized the settings for the device parameters so that the program instantly and accurately recognized Ukrainian speech.

The main conclusion from this experience was that voice input for children is not just a convenience, but a necessary condition for entering technology, which completely removes the barrier between an idea and its implementation. By the way, after creating this tool, Oleksandr himself also practically stopped typing long prompts manually.

“I enjoyed communicating with Claude Code when I dictated an idea to him by voice, and he did everything and then wrote me an answer or asked clarifying questions,” Lada shares her impressions.

The next day, Oleksandr set up a working environment for Lada in Claude Code, transferred the collected ideas there, and taught his daughter to set tasks for artificial intelligence using her voice.

The game creation process covered the full development cycle

The project went through all stages of product creation: from initial idea generation, selection of a technical stack, and creation of a local prototype to domain registration, setting up accounts on Cloudflare, GitHub, and Resend, publishing online, and further marketing.

The main architect and developer of the project was Claude Code, while ChatGPT was used at the brainstorming stage. Interestingly, Oleksandr deliberately refused image generators and third-party libraries - the characters and visual effects were drawn with pure code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Even testing was entrusted to artificial intelligence: Claude created a special bot that went through levels and helped find hidden bugs in complex terrain.

The technical stack was supplemented with Cloudflare services for hosting and security, GitHub for version control, and Resend for email notifications. The domain for the game was chosen as a free Ukrainian one — seals.pp.ua, which perfectly suited the theme.

“The easiest way to interact with Claude was through voice. Not a single line of code, we didn’t even open a single file in the whole time. The hardest thing for me was not to interfere in the process. I was constantly itching to say: “let me dictate.” Sometimes I still took the initiative, especially in everything related to marketing: a referral program, a system of points and incentives. We deliberately didn’t skip a single boring step. Together we chose and registered a domain, connected hosting, and started GitHub. After going through the entire process, the Internet ceased to be magic for Lada,” says Oleksandr.

For the 10-year-old developer, this project was not only fun, but also a deep dive into the principles of how the digital world works. Despite the need to be patient while waiting for answers from AI, Lada quickly learned to correctly formulate tasks and give accurate feedback.

"The hardest part was waiting 10-15 minutes for Claude to implement everything. But it was very interesting to learn how everything works: how the domain name that I enter in the browser is connected to the server where the game itself is located. I didn't think that you could just take the address on the Internet for yourself," Lada shares her impressions.

A game that motivates you to learn English

The project was called "Adventures of the Seal Family" and became available in browsers on computers and smartphones at seals.pp.ua . The initial idea grew into a full-fledged complex of three mini-games: the "Cave" labyrinth, where you need to save a baby seal and open chests, the "Ice Trek" platformer in the Mario style with 10 locations, and "Seal Race" with a choice of transport.

The main feature of the project was the motivation to learn English: to get crystals to buy clothes or cars, players have to translate words. In addition, the game implemented personal accounts, public ratings, a notification system, and a referral program.

The release took place on August 2, and in a short time the game has shown good performance: users translated 1,265 English words with 80% correct answers, played 769 games, and Claude Code generated about 36,000 lines of code over 116 versions.

“The most valuable feedback came not through words, but through behavior. Lada’s younger brother, Andriy, played 131 games and complained that he had purchased colors, but could not try them on. We checked the code — it worked correctly. It turned out that Andriy was playing for the family seal, which has its own color from birth. It was not the code that was broken, but the logic of the explanation, so we immediately redesigned that screen,” adds Oleksandr.

Plans and new horizons

The success of the first project inspired the father and daughter to further develop it. Lada plans to scale up "The Adventures of the Seal Family."

"I have a lot of plans for the game. I want to add new caves and make levels so that the next ones become harder to play. And so that two people can play the seal race at the same time," says Lada about future updates.

At the same time, Oleksandr shared his experience on LinkedIn and suggested holding a workshop where his daughter would act as a speaker with her own presentation. Although the group has not yet been assembled, Oleksandr is open to holding a training meeting for everyone if the audience is interested.

The development of the idea has already gone beyond one project. For the grandfather, who loves Sudoku, and out of nostalgia for classic games, the family created a new portal mygame.pp.ua. Currently, five games are available there: Sudoku of different levels, Minesweeper, Five in a Row, Tanks, and Sea Battle, ninety percent of which support multiplayer from different devices.

Conclusions of the family experiment

Oleksandr considers Lada's unforgettable reaction when she first saw the real result of her work on the Internet to be the most valuable achievement of the project. The key value of this experience lies not in the usual learning of programming, but in the deep transformation of the child's thinking: she moved from the role of a passive consumer of content to an active creator who understands that the surrounding digital world can be really influenced.

In addition, the project also fulfilled an important educational function, as the game mechanics motivate learning foreign words. According to Oleksandr, one of the most enjoyable moments for the family was watching the names of completely unfamiliar people start appearing on the leaderboard.

“The child needs to be shown the entire chain. We intentionally didn’t miss a single step: we chose a domain together, connected hosting, watched the changes reach the site. After that, the Internet stopped being magic for her. But it doesn’t work by itself — you need an adult nearby who holds the frame, doesn’t let you give up halfway through, and shows that a bug is a normal work process. The main thing is not to do it for the child, but to explain and give her the opportunity to manage the process herself,” Oleksandr concludes.

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