A simple and fun game to play with your kids

As I prepare to write this blog, we realized that, we did not even come up with a name for this game. We are going to call this, “Build your own X” game. What’s X? We will discover it soon.

Objective

Build your own “Ice cream” using 3 things,

• Flavor
• Syrup
• Toppings

How to play

There are 15 chits in the box. 5 for different flavors of ice cream, 5 for different syrup and 5 for different toppings.

• Give points 1 to 5 for each flavor of ice cream. For example, Vanilla gets 1 point, Strawberry gets 2 points, Butterscotch gets 3 points, Pistachio gets 4 points and Chocolate gets 5 points. It can be random or based on your liking.
• Similarly, give 1 to 5 points for different syrups and toppings.
• Fold the chits and shuffle everything in a single pile.
• All the players (up to 5), can pick 3 random chits.
• If you get tiles from different types, keep everything. For example, if you get, Vanilla flavor, Blueberry sauce and Nut toppings. You can keep all three tiles. Wohoo!
• If you get tiles from a similar type, keep only one. For example, if you get, Vanilla flavor, Strawberry flavor and Nut toppings. You can keep Nut toppings, but you need to choose to keep either Vanilla flavor or Strawberry flavor. Tip: Pick the one with the highest point.
• Now count the points based on the chits you are left with. Give your ice cream a quirky name, tell about a nice time when you would like to have it.
• After few rounds (may be 5 or 10), total the score from each round and find the winner.
• The most important rule: Do not forget to enjoy the game!

That’s it. It’s that simple.

You can build your own version of this game using anything. Build your own House, Build your own Unicorn, Build your own Pizza etc. And that’s why the “X”.

If you are curious, continue to read the story of how myself and my 7 year old daughter came up with this game and had a blast. We did not even come up Ice cream based version, it was something totally different and weird (may be for some).

The origins story

Everyday, I read a chapter for my daughter before we go to sleep. One day, she suddenly said, let’s create a game. As any restless dad, I said, not today, I will rather read you a chapter from your favorite book (she is an ardent fan of Owl diaries) and then we will go to sleep. She was persistent, I finally caved and said, give me some starting point. She said “Spectacles”. I went, “What in the world is that random word, Spectacles, How can I come up with a game using it”. We kept rambling back and forth, and she was now irritated and annoyed (I was as well).

Somehow, I remembered about Raja Rani Kalla Police game I used to play as kid with my friends and family. I started making chits (a small piece of square paper) and wrote down different shapes of spectacles with cute illustrations, “circle”, “oval”, “square”, “rectangle”, “aviator”. She started getting excited. I gave each of them a point from 1 to 5. I knew folding them and asking her to pick one of them would not have any excitement. It would be mere luck, just like throwing a dice and getting a number. I knew she would not be happy, it was time to improvise.

I started making more chits, I wrote different kinds of frames, “plastic”, “wood” (I do not think they make wooden spectacles, but still), “metal”, “acetate” (what???), “titanium”. I could not illustrate them, but gave points again 1 to 5. My daughter was even more excited now.

I started making more chits. Now, I wrote different kind of lens types “anti-reflective”, “scratch-resistant”, “polaroid”, “bluelight filter”, “tinted” (I googled few types and my daughter was excited even though she did not understand any of these) and gave them points 1 to 5. We made 3 piles, frame shape, frame type and lens type.

We folded them carefully, shuffled each pile separately and then picked one chit from each pile. I got “oval” shaped spectacle, with “wooden” frame and “anti-resistant” lens. She got “aviator” shaped spectacle, with “plastic” frame and “scratch-resistant” lens. We counted the points from each chit and she won. She felt so happy (not for the game, but for winning). We played few rounds of this and while doing this she would ask if we could draw or visualize how the combination of this would look like. She was imagining and talking about it after every round. Her excitement kept growing. I was so happy!

Time for another improvisation, we were tired of keeping the piles separated after every round. We shuffled them all at once and had to pick 3 chits randomly. We could get all 3 chits with only lens types (low probability, but possible) or 1 shape + 1 lens type+ 1 frame type (after playing so many rounds of this game, I can say this is also low probability) or 2 shapes + 1 lens type etc. I believe you understand the combinations here.

The first time we played this version of the game, she got, “oval” shape, “square” shape, “polaroid” lenses. We both in unison said, we did not get all the three things that we need to form a spectacle. At this moment, we realized we had a game. Some luck (picking random chits), some logic (forming a spectacle) was embedded in this version of the game (This game doesn’t have any strategy though). We said we can have only 1 chit of a category and drop the duplicate from that category. So she obviously picked the one she liked “oval” frame, though its point was lower compared to “square” frame. I suggested her to pick “square” to maximize her points, she agreed. So her total score was based on “square” shape + “polaroid” lenses. Similarly, I could not form the spectacle as well, but scored lower than her. She was now excited, not because she won, because it was fun and simple. We enjoyed this version and played a few rounds, totaled up, guess what, she won!

We finally said, it was time to bed. But then ideas popped in my head and her head. She said, “Nanna, this is the best game ever!”. I said, “We should do this with different things, for example, ice cream, it requires a flavour, syrup and toppings”. Ideas started bursting in her head too, “We should do this for house, for example, house requires walls, roofs and room”. We kept discussing it as we wrapped ourselves in the bedsheet and slept away. Next day, she carefully packed the chits, held them together with a rubber band and took it to school. Guess what, her friends liked it as well.

And that is how this game was born and we iterated on it. I took it to ChatGPT/Gemini and created a 3 * 5 grid with 5 different types of ice cream flavors, 5 different types of syrups and 5 different types of toppings. Printed it out, cut it and we wrote the scores based on our liking and started playing. Next day, we created another version based on house. Ice walls, Treehouse room etc. The imagination was fun and limitless. We even created a version of this using Unicorn and gifted it for my daughter’s friend birthday (as the other birthday kid loved Unicorn a lot).

It’s now time for you to play the game with your family. If you and your kid create a different version of this game, please share your creation here — https://app.youform.com/forms/dkhry8nj. Myself and my daughter would love to play your version and if we get enough submissions we will create a blog post and feature them for everyone to download it.

Example Prompt for Build your own Ice cream

I used both ChatGPT and Gemini with free tier and they did a great job generating the images.

Create a printable grid of 3 rows and 5 columns of illustrative ice cream images in pastel colors, soft and soothing for kids.
Each image should have a small caption underneath describing it.
Row 1 (Flavours): Chocolate scoop, Strawberry scoop, Vanilla scoop, Mint scoop, Mango scoop 
Row 2 (Sauces): Caramel drizzle, Chocolate syrup, Strawberry sauce, Honey drizzle, Blueberry syrup 
Row 3 (Toppings): Sprinkles, Nuts, Cookie bits, Fruit pieces, Gummy bears.
Style: watercolor/pastel, cute, kid-friendly, soft colors, simple background (white), easy to cut for printing." 
Ensure row 1 is cone and scoop.
Ensure row 2 is only sauce.
Ensure row 3 is only toppings. 
Ensure each grid is same size and square shaped.

Examples of “Build your own X”

Thank you.