Your game will be nothing like this one, and that's the point. Compare whether your wish answers the same questions — not the idea.

🕵️ The case files

🚩 = the lines to flag

Case 1 · Leo's mole game — it never ended.

• ✅ Moles pop out of nine holes in a green lawn.
• ✅ When I click a mole it goes «bonk» and I get a point.
• 🚩 Use a random number generator to pick the hole.
• 🚩 It should be a really fun game.
• ✅ The moles get a bit faster every five points.
• 🚩 Save the high score in local storage.

Lines 3 and 6 are 🔧 HOW, line 4 is 🌫️ fog. And the real mystery: no line says how the game ends. No way to win, no way to lose — so the agent built a game that goes on forever. That is why a game wish needs question 3: how do you win or lose?

Case 2 · Mia's racing game — the agent picked the wrong kind of race.

• 🚩 A race.
• ✅ I steer my car with the arrow keys.
• 🚩 Draw the cars with a canvas element.
• ✅ If I touch the grass, I slow down.
• ✅ The first one to finish three laps wins, and a golden cup spins on the screen.
• 🚩 Make it awesome.

«A race» — of what? Cars, snails, rockets? 🌫️ Mia fixed that in line 2, but only by accident. «Canvas element» is 🔧 HOW. «Make it awesome» is 🌫️ fog. The rest is excellent: it even has a rule (grass slows you down) and an ending with a reward.

Case 3 · Ben's memory game — almost perfect.

• ✅ Twelve cards lie face down, each with an animal on the back.
• ✅ I turn two over; if they match, they stay up.
• 🚩 Put the cards in an array and shuffle it.
• ✅ It counts how many tries I needed.
• ✅ When everything is matched, it says whether that was a new record — and the animals do a little dance.

Only one line — «put the cards in an array and shuffle it» is 🔧 HOW. The rest is a model game wish: what you see, how you play, a rule, how it ends, and a reward. A good detective also knows when the case is almost closed.

A game wish with no holes

🐙 "I wish for a game where an octopus sits at the bottom of the sea and pearls fall down from above. You move the octopus left and right with your finger or the arrow keys to catch the pearls.

Every pearl you catch is one point. Sometimes a black pearl falls — if you catch that one, you lose a point, so it's better to dodge it. The pearls fall faster and faster as the game goes on.

At 30 points you win, and the octopus does a happy dance with bubbles everywhere. If you drop three pearls, the game is over and it asks if you want to try again."

What makes it good

What the robot grandmother test sounds like

You: Don't build anything yet! … My game: moles pop out of nine holes …

Agent: Great game! Three questions a player would ask: 1. How long does a mole stay up before it hides again? 2. Can two moles pop up at the same time? 3. Is there a time limit, or only the hearts?

You: A mole stays up for two seconds. Later in the game two can pop up at once. No time limit — only the hearts.

Each answer went straight into the wish before building it. Every question the agent asks before building is a guess it did not have to make while building.

The three holes almost everyone leaves

1. No ending. "A game where you catch pearls" — and then? Forever is boring. Always say when it's over.
2. Nothing is worth anything. One small extra rule — the black pearl — turns a toy into a game. Engineers call it tension: something to gain, something to lose.
3. Foggy about looking. "It should look nice" tells the agent nothing. "A blue sea and glittering pearls" gives it a picture.

Back to the tasks · lesson 1