The FamZoo Piggy Bank Challenge by 9 Year Old Game Designer, "Mr. Q"

Do you worry about the number of hours your child is frittering away playing online games? I know we do. But what if your child was spending that time designing and writing games instead of just playing them? That sounds a lot better, doesn’t it? It’s a creative challenge, and coding is a terrific skill for kids to learn in today’s software-driven world.

Too hard you say? Not necessarily. Try a game-building tool like GameMaker from YoYo Games. Unleash your child on it (there’s a free “Lite” version), and see what happens. You might be very surprised. I know I was. All I did was give my 9 year old son, “Mr. Q.”, a FamZoo piggy image, and he did everything else on his own. Try your hand at his FamZoo Piggy Bank Challenge game below (if you can’t see it or it isn’t working for some reason, visit http://famzoo.com/games/piggyv1).

Check out how fast your little piggy’s legs move when you bag a speed boost, and watch out for the bombs! Let us know your high score in the comments — it’s the honor system!

Note: if you want to put your kid’s game up on the web like I’ve done in this blog post, you’ll need to buy the HTML5 version.

Has your child tried building any games? Tell us about it in the comments. Be sure to provide a link if it’s available online.