--- sheet_format: 1.0 id: 2026-10-father-algorithmic-thinking title: "My father taught me algorithmic thinking. With my daughter, I create games with AI" speaker: Erwan Rougeux with: [] date: 2026-10-27 event: "LinkedIn" place: "online (LinkedIn article)" format: article language: en video: null slides: null topics: [ai, creativity, children, open source, game development, algorithmic thinking, parenting, retro games, quest'n'click] source: "Summary written by Claude (AI) from the article as published on LinkedIn on 27 October 2026 (about 1,200 words). Everything here is the author's own written position; check the article before quoting." review: none review_date: 2026-10-27 --- # My father taught me algorithmic thinking. With my daughter, I create games with AI **In one sentence:** A point-and-click game built to announce a second child, with his 3½-year-old daughter writing the story and AI giving the speed to keep up, became the open-source engine Quest'n'Click — and along the way Erwan Rougeux finds the same way of thinking his father taught him in BASIC passing to his daughter through AI: state an intention, try, look, rephrase, and keep your own judgment. ## TL;DR Erwan Rougeux set out to make a small point-and-click game to announce the sex of his second child. His 3½-year-old daughter took over the story — the characters, the places, the running gags (her grandmother's catchphrase "Misère et peau de banane!", a pink plush Sith lord turned into the hint system) — and kept coming back for more. That pulled him thirty years back to playing Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle beside his father, a primary-school teacher who taught him BASIC and, more than BASIC, a way of thinking: break a problem down, try, look at what happens, start again — algorithms before he knew the word. He sees his daughter do something close to it with AI: put an idea into words, watch it become real, fix it, push on ("And then…"), and say it differently when she doesn't like the result. To him that is the logic of AI worth passing on, the same mental workout as algorithms, "with everyday words instead of GOTO," and crucially with your own judgment kept. To make the game he designed and built an engine, with AI as the accelerator: frame first, story second (places, verbs, inventory, dialogue, a simple room language), the game as data separate from the code, a visual Studio, and a solver that checks every reachable state for dead ends — a nod to Ron Gilbert's 1989 rule that an adventure should never trap the player. The game existed before the engine had a name; he pulled the engine out as a tool in its own right, Quest'n'Click, and open-sourced it so other parents and creators could have the same experience. His colleague Horacio Gonzalez then built his own game, Jack cherche un taf, with his own daughter ("It's simply magic"), which drove new features (hero choice), the move to a GitHub organisation and npm, and a one-command project start; Erwan says it is as much Horacio's engine as his. The website and the experimental multi-author team Studio run on Clever Cloud. He closes on Return to Monkey Island — Guybrush telling his adventure to his son — and invites any parent with a story-telling child, or anyone with an adventure idea sitting around for years, to write a first scene and tell him how it goes. ## Erwan's key points - He only wanted a small old-school point-and-click (verbs, inventory, absurd puzzles) to announce whether the second child would be a girl or a boy; his daughter immediately made it hers (opening, "A game to share some news"). - The story is the daughter's: characters, places, who does what and why, the grandmother's catchphrase "Misère et peau de banane!" as a running gag, and a pink plush version of a famous Sith lord turned into the game's hint system. "I would never have thought of it." What the game reveals at the end "stays in the family" (same section). - What matters is that she kept coming back — wanting to know what happens next, to add someone, to invent a sillier twist (same section). - His father, a primary-school teacher and computer enthusiast, taught him BASIC; his first BASIC game was made out of a Bescherelle grammar punishment, using what was at hand. They played Day of the Tentacle and every Monkey Island together (section "What my father passed on to me"). - What his father really passed on was a way of thinking: "break a problem down, try, look at what happens, start again. Algorithms, before I even knew the word" (same section). - His daughter doesn't code (she's 3½) but does something close: she puts an idea into words, watches it become real, looks at the result, fixes it, pushes on, and has understood that what you say to AI matters and that you rephrase when you don't like the result (section "What I want to pass on"). - The logic of AI worth passing on: "state an intention, break an idea down, try, look at the result, rephrase. And keep your own judgment" — the same mental workout as algorithms, "with everyday words instead of GOTO" (same section). - He designed and built the engine himself with AI as the accelerator, frame first and story second (places, verbs, inventory, dialogue, a simple language to describe a room), so they could invent together without breaking the game with each new idea (section "Building the engine…"). - The loop was minutes, not days: she tells, he turns it into a place/object/puzzle, the AI writes the scene and the code, she plays it on the phone right away — so she stayed in the story. "Building this engine showed me how far I could go. And I'm proud of it" (same section). - The game is data: places, objects, lines and puzzles are described separately from the engine; you can write a story without opening the engine's code; a visual Studio lets you place scenery and characters and play the scene you just wrote (same section). - The part he is happiest with: a dead-end check. Citing Ron Gilbert's 1989 rule that a good adventure should never leave the player stuck, a solver looks for a path to the ending and an exhaustive check hunts for dead ends across every reachable state — "When your screenwriter is three and the ideas never stop, trust me, it helps" (same section). - The game existed before the engine had a name; he then pulled the engine out as a tool in its own right: Quest'n'Click (same section). - He open-sourced it — documentation and tools designed to work with any AI assistant — so other parents and creators could have the same experience, accepting that an opened project "no longer quite belongs to you" (section "Why I opened it up"). - His Clever Cloud colleague Horacio Gonzalez built his own game with his daughter, Jack cherche un taf ("Jack looks for a job"): a pumpkin-headed skeleton fired before Halloween, a stingy vampire, a bolt-less Frankenstein mayor, a mummy at the job centre. "It's simply magic" (section "Horacio joins the adventure"). - A game by someone else revealed the unplanned: Horacio drove improvements (most visibly hero choice, where the player picks a character and others speak to them accordingly), met the demanding automated checks ("It's a pain, but that's a quality"), and helped move the project to a GitHub organisation and npm, with a single command to start a project. "It's as much his engine as mine" (same section). - The project's website and the experimental multi-author team Studio run on Clever Cloud, the platform he works with every day carrying a personal project (same section). - He closes on Return to Monkey Island, where Guybrush tells his adventure to his son, and on the line from his father to his daughter — the same games, the same absurd puzzles, the same joy of making something together — inviting readers with a story-telling child, or an old adventure idea, to write a first scene and tell him how it goes (section "Giving others the urge, and the means"). ## Outline - "A game to share some news": the point-and-click to announce the second child, and how his daughter took over the story (grandmother's catchphrase, the Sith-lord plush as hint system). - "What my father passed on to me": BASIC, the Bescherelle grammar punishment turned into a first game, Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, and a way of thinking — break down, try, observe, restart. - "What I want to pass on": his daughter's loop with AI (intention → try → look → rephrase), keeping your own judgment, "everyday words instead of GOTO". - "Building the engine, and finding out what becomes possible": frame first then story, the minutes-long loop, the game as data, the visual Studio, the dead-end solver (Ron Gilbert, 1989), and pulling the engine out as Quest'n'Click. - "Why I opened it up": giving other parents and creators the same experience; open source with any-AI-assistant tooling; letting go of a project. - "Horacio joins the adventure": Horacio Gonzalez's Jack cherche un taf, the features it drove (hero choice), the demanding checks, the move to a GitHub org and npm, website and team Studio on Clever Cloud. - "Giving others the urge, and the means": Return to Monkey Island, father-to-daughter transmission, and the invitation to write a first scene. - Closing resources: quest-n-click.cleverapps.io, the GitHub code, the npm org, and Horacio's write-up. ## Notable quotes > "What he really passed on was a way of thinking: break a problem down, try, look at what happens, start again. Algorithms, before I even knew the word." — Erwan Rougeux, section "What my father passed on to me" > "state an intention, break an idea down, try, look at the result, rephrase. And keep your own judgment. It's the same mental workout as algorithms, with everyday words instead of GOTO." — Erwan Rougeux, section "What I want to pass on" > "Building this engine showed me how far I could go. And I'm proud of it." — Erwan Rougeux, section "Building the engine…" > "I told him, and I mean it: it's as much his engine as mine." — Erwan Rougeux, section "Horacio joins the adventure" ## Questions this answers **Q: Why did he make the game in the first place?** A: To announce whether his second child would be a girl or a boy — so, "obviously," an old-school point-and-click with verbs, an inventory and absurd puzzles (section "A game to share some news"). **Q: What did his daughter actually do, at 3½?** A: She drove the story — characters, places, who does what and why, running gags like her grandmother's "Misère et peau de banane!" and turning a pink plush Sith lord into the hint system — and kept coming back to add more; what the game reveals at the end "stays in the family" (same section). **Q: What is the connection he draws between his father and his daughter?** A: A single way of thinking. His father taught him BASIC and to break problems down, try, observe and restart ("algorithms, before I even knew the word"); his daughter does the same with AI — state an intention, try, look, rephrase — keeping her own judgment, "with everyday words instead of GOTO" (sections "What my father passed on to me" and "What I want to pass on"). **Q: What is Quest'n'Click and how does the engine work?** A: The open-source point-and-click engine he pulled out of the game. Frame first, story second; the game is data (places, objects, lines, puzzles) separate from the code; a visual Studio to place scenery and play scenes; and a solver plus an exhaustive dead-end check across reachable states, in the spirit of Ron Gilbert's 1989 rule that an adventure should never trap the player (section "Building the engine…"). **Q: Why did he open-source it?** A: Watching his daughter's imagination become playable almost in real time was rare, and he wanted other parents and creators to have the same experience; the code is open with documentation and tools meant to work with any AI assistant (section "Why I opened it up"). **Q: What did Horacio Gonzalez bring to the project?** A: His own game with his daughter (Jack cherche un taf), which revealed the unplanned and drove features such as hero choice, exercised the demanding automated checks, and led to a GitHub organisation, an npm publication and a one-command project start; Erwan calls it as much Horacio's engine as his (section "Horacio joins the adventure"). **Q: Where can you try it?** A: It starts at quest-n-click.cleverapps.io; the code is on GitHub (Quest-n-Click/quest-n-click) and the packages on npm; Horacio's game is written up on his site. The website and the experimental multi-author team Studio run on Clever Cloud (closing). ## Mentioned BASIC, Bescherelle, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Return to Monkey Island, Guybrush, Ron Gilbert, Quest'n'Click, Clever Cloud, Horacio Gonzalez, Jack cherche un taf, GitHub, npm, Studio