The Surprising Complexity of Adding a "Kid Mode" to Your Video Game

The designer of Nuclear Blaze wanted his child to play his video game, and doing so meant learning some hard (and interesting) lessons along the way.

Difficulty settings are tricky, and only more complicated with children. There’s a fine line between pandering and condescension. Many games punt on trying to understand children at all. Which is what made discovering Nuclear Blaze, a 2021 action game about a firefighter who also rescues cats, neat. The game has an explicit “Kid Mode.”

Here’s how the game describes Kid Mode:

“The Kid Mode provides a better experience for very young kids. (I basically made it for my 3-year-old son). You play in specifically crafted levels, you can’t die, water spray is auto-aimed, and your goal is to save all kittens. :)”

I loaded up Kid Mode, and it works as advertised. Players don’t have to worry about jumping—the game handles it. Players won’t have to worry about where the fires are located—the game handles it. Players don’t even have to worry about climbing a pesky ladder, a problem that can vex even your veteran gamers—the game handles it.

You can watch Kid Mode in action here. I must confess that I am not a kid, however.

 “The game was originally developed for a game jam, and I took this opportunity to try making a firefighting game my elder kid could play,” said designer Sébastien Benard. “Thing is, there's not [many] firefighting games out there, except serious sims. So it proved to be quite a challenge. After the jam, the feedback was really promising, so I decided to turn the small game to a larger scale. Along this process, the title got more [and] more complex, so less [and] less playable for my kid. So at some point, it became evident that if I wanted to keep the original intent, I needed a dedicated mode for him.”

Benard’s son is named Gabriel, and Nuclear Blaze, in prototype and final form, was one of Gabriel’s first games. His first game, however, was another Benard’s creation, Petit Tracteur Bleu (Little Blue Tractor). Benard made Petit Tracteur Bleu for a simple reason: Gabriel loved tractors. You can play the game, which Benard said was “designed to be played by someone who never played a video game before,” right here.

It’s simple, but utterly gorgeous. But in both instances, Benard was left fumbling in the dark to determine what it meant to make a game “for kids.”

“I actually found close to zero titles that did truly approach the question,” he said. “Most games were either ‘not for toddlers’ at all, or full on ‘no actual gameplay.’ My goal was to have a kid-friendly 2D platformer, without compromising too much on level design, and I didn't find any good examples of that.”

It is fundamentally different to make games for children, and the reasons can be surprising. Whatever you think of the Paw Patrol games made by Outright Games (they’re just OK!), they do think about kids when designing them, down to designing simplified camera systems that ensure the player doesn’t have to worry about it.

“When it comes to design, accessibility is at the front of our minds,” said Paw Patrol World producer Martin Willingham to me a few months back. “We think, ‘What are the barriers that may limit the playability of this game?’ Getting the controls right is crucial, which is why we focus test all of our games with the target audience of kids.”

Benard’s focus testing was his kid, but Benard tried to keep the sessions few and far between, because he wanted responses to feel natural. Gabriel was three at the time.

The first game Bernard made for his son was riffing on his son’s love of tractors.

“It's funny how many things are, like, obvious to us and prove to be a challenge for inexperienced kids,” said Benard. “For example, ‘ladders’ were very tricky to approach, mostly because we needed an extra keystroke which wasn't used very often, while also combining some precision (e.g. position in front of the ladder, then press UP). This small detail had a huge influence on how I approached the level design in Kid Mode: I wanted verticality, while still using mostly only LEFT/RIGHT keys.”

My wife has no problem with games, but they’re not in her wheelhouse. The last time she seriously tried—like, serious serious—was probably Left 4 Dead 2. She mostly had a good time, but can you guess what caused her the biggest headache? Ladders!!  

Nuclear Blaze was released on PC, and now it’s on other platforms, including Switch. Benard said he’s received a lot of “positive feedback” about Kid Mode that’s extended well beyond children, including individuals who saw it’s value an accessibility mode. 

It’s been several years since Nuclear Blaze was released in 2021. Benard’s son, Gabriel, is several years older. Like a lot of kids, he’s moved on to games like Minecraft. He’s also dabbled in the story mode for Nuclear Blaze, which has given Benard some ideas.

“I think accessibility options are an important idea—always,” he said. “It's not about adding an ‘easy mode,’ but more like adding options and features to adjust the game experience to your own abilities and taste, in some way. It's a balance of that, and keeping the original author intent. I'm now working on a new game, but this time with a publisher. And they were big fans of Nuclear Blaze accessibility elements, including the Kid Mode, and specifically asked me for these in my new project. I think it's much more than a fad, like everyone is talking about that nowadays. It's really about making sure people can actually play your game and feel what you wanted them to feel.”

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• Benard is so right about how many “kid” games just give up on gameplay, which is what I meant about the fine line between pandering and condescension.

• Nuclear Blaze seems sick as hell, and I’m gonna play it.

• If anyone’s aware of other games with similar modes, holler at me. I’m listening.