# A game maker for kids, with the grown-up details up front A kid who can play a game can judge one, which is most of what this needs. What a parent needs to know is that it is a desktop install, it needs the internet to build, and it costs nothing to start. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your own Claude, ChatGPT, agent or API key. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, on the official Godot engine. Source: https://flockbay.com/game-maker-for-kids/ · Updated 2026-10-13 ## For the parent reading this first Flockbay is a desktop application. It installs on a Windows PC or a Mac with Apple Silicon, or on a Chromebook with its Linux environment turned on. It is not a website and not a tablet app. If the machine in the house is a tablet, this is not the right tool and it is better to know that now. Building a game [needs a live internet connection](/answers/does-flockbay-work-offline/), because the AI that builds the game and the systems that generate assets are online. Playing a game that has already been built does not need the connection. So a long car journey is fine for playing, and not for making. The download is free, and so is everything in it. Nothing has to be bought for a family or a child, and plans for more hosted AI are optional. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your Claude or ChatGPT plan, your own agent, or an API key. Every child is using the same free app and the same engine as anyone else. ## What a kid actually does with it After they describe the game, the app asks one thing: 2D or 3D, with the answer read from their description, and nothing made until they confirm it. Then Flockbay asks them a few questions, one round at a time, and each question comes with its own suggestion, so a kid who does not know yet can just take it. What comes out is a short plan, called a brief: what gets built first, what comes later, and what is not in this version. Nothing is built until they say yes to it. If they asked for something enormous, the brief says so kindly and offers a smaller first game. Then Flockbay builds it. Hills, a lake in the dip, trees along a ridge, a character on the path. A character that can double jump. Spikes that start the room again. Wolves that come out at night. [Flockbay writes the code](/answers/who-writes-the-code-in-flockbay/) that makes those true, in the project, and plays the game itself first to check it runs. A 2D game usually arrives with ground to stand on, scenery behind it and a character who walks, falls and jumps when they press the keys. Then the good part: they play it, and it is wrong. The jump is floaty, the wolves are too fast, night is boring. They say so, it changes, they play again. Kids are extremely good at this step and usually much less polite about it than adults, which makes them better at it. And when they want something exactly so, the lake a bit further left or one more tree on the ridge, they can do it themselves. The tools Flockbay builds with are also buttons around the world's view in the Godot editor: in 3D, raise a hill, paint a path, drop a tree; in 2D, hold the mouse down to paint more ground and drag back over it to rub it out. Undo takes back anything they do not like. It is closer to building something in a sandbox game than to filling in a form, and nobody has to do it at all. ## Nothing here treats them as too young to decide A lot of software for children works by removing choices, on the theory that fewer options means less frustration. The result is that every game made with it looks the same and the child can feel the ceiling within an afternoon. This works the other way round. The things taken off their plate are the code and the heavy lifting of building, which are the parts that stop people. The decisions stay. What the world looks like, what the game is about, [whether it is any good](/blog/how-to-judge-a-game-you-did-not-code/) — those are the child's, and there is no menu of approved game types they have to pick from. The engine underneath is [Godot, which is open source](/what-is-godot/) and which real games ship on. What a child makes is a real Godot project on the disk. If they stick with it for years, they do not have to leave and start over. ## Age, supervision and expectations There is no age gate to speak of, and no claim that this is designed for a specific age band. What it needs is a person who can use a computer with a mouse and keyboard, describe what they want in sentences, and stay with something for longer than one sitting. That describes some eight year olds and not some fifteen year olds. It is worth setting one expectation. This is not a tool that [hands over a finished game in five minutes](/how-long-does-it-take-to-make-a-game-with-ai/). The first playable version arrives quickly; making it good takes as long as making anything good takes. A child who wanted a finished game to appear will be disappointed, and a child who wanted to make one will not. Sitting with them for the first session helps, mostly because the first session is where the loop clicks. After that most of them do not want you there. ## Questions ### What age is this for? There is no target age. It suits a child who is comfortable with a mouse and keyboard, can describe what they want, and will come back to a project more than once. ### Does it work on an iPad or a Chromebook? Not on an iPad. On a Chromebook with an Intel or AMD processor, yes, once Linux is turned on in its settings. It is a desktop app and has to be installed. ### Does it need the internet? To build, yes. Playing a game that has already been built does not need a connection. ### How much does it cost? Nothing. The download is free, and so is building with it. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your Claude or ChatGPT plan, your own agent, or an API key. ### Does my child need to learn to code first? No. Flockbay writes the code. The code is visible in the project if they get curious, which some do. ### Can they share the game with friends? The app's Export makes a Windows build of the game, an .exe a friend can run. The project is also a normal Godot project, so Godot's own export can take it to other platforms. Sharing it is worth a grown-up. Download Flockbay free: Free to download for Windows, macOS and Linux. https://flockbay.com/ Related: [AI game maker for kids](/ai-game-maker-for-kids/), [Game maker for beginners](/game-maker-for-beginners/), [Game maker for schools](/game-maker-for-schools/), [Make a game with no experience](/make-a-game-with-no-experience/), [A Scratch alternative for when the blocks stop being enough](/scratch-alternative/)