Monster City

"Dad, would you like to play this new game I made?"

I told Rowan that I wanted to finish the last few pages of a book I was reading, and after that we would play. He arranged his supplies, a sharp pencil and some paper, and waited patiently.

"Well, first you choose your character," he explained, while he drew. There was a box on top, with a scary cave and a bat in it, but that wasn't a choice for character, that was just the background. He also put the titles in, and we worked on the spelling a bit.

"Here's Boxo. His head is a box." Boxo had tentacles and things too, but with a head like that they don't call you Tentacles. "This is Hover Eye. His legs have eyes on the ends, and that's why he has to hover, so he doesn't walk on them." One of Rowan's previous alien creations had had this exact handicap. "And this is 4th." I liked that one, because his long ears and spindly legs looked like a firework caught mid-explosion, so I picked him.

Rowan got out a fresh page and drew a cave. "This is your home. It's a cave, with stalactites and stalagmites." I explained to him again which was which, and how he could remember the difference. He thought it was a good trick, using the 'c' and the 'g.' "Do you want to exit the cave?" It seemed like the only choice, so I agreed, and he drew in the dotted line trail.

The next page had a number of choices, including a mysterious place, a gift shop, and a sports arena. I'm one for mystery, so that's where we went, as shown by the dotted line. Another page.

Rowan drew up the cart surfing mini-game while I got Jasmine started on something else. There was a cart and a track, and there were buttons across the top of the page, each drawn in swiftly and exactly by Rowan and his ever-moving pencil. I decided that this was a Graphite User Interface, but he didn't get it. The buttons caused 4th to do various tricks on the track, and pretty soon I had accumulated 40 Monster Coins.

When we got to the gift shop, he admitted to me, "Monster City is a lot like the penguin game, only it's different because there are monsters." I said that was fine, and spent my money on a new pet, who I named George.

Rowan was making frequent trips to the pencil sharpener, and as he held the page, drew in locations and buttons and monsters, erased messages and so on his hands steadily became black. Then the front of his shirt and his nose. I suggested he take a break and wash hands, and then we played a new game, which was finding Rowan Clues in the form of black smudges around the house. That was a good game too.

I thanked Rowan for showing me the new game, and asked him if he'd like me to teach him how to make games like that on the computer, instead of on paper.

"No thanks. I'm tired of learning things."