Puppy Goes Home: a coding game for kids
Coding with arrows, no reading needed
Puppy Goes Home is a coding game for young children. There's a puppy on a grid and, a few squares away, its doghouse. Your child lines up a row of arrows, taps ▶, and the puppy runs, following them one at a time with nobody steering it halfway. If the arrows lead to the door, it goes in and lies down. If it bumps into a rock or a log, it barks and runs back to the start. There's nothing to read: it's all arrows and pictures.
How to play
- Build the path: tap the arrows and they line up in a row, in the order the puppy will follow them. Each arrow is one step.
- Tap ▶ and watch. The puppy runs, and the arrow it's following lights up at every step.
- If it bumps into something, the arrow it couldn't follow turns red and the puppy runs back to the start. The row stays put: change what went wrong and try again.
Three levels, from 4×4 to 6×6 with repeat
On the easy level the grid is 4×4 with no obstacles: counting squares and picking the right direction is enough. Medium is 5×5 and brings in rocks, logs, mud, fences and bushes, and the path that looks obvious is usually blocked. Hard is 6×6 and adds two buttons, ×2 and ×3, that repeat the last arrow. There the path has more steps than the row can hold, so repeating is the only way through. Each level has 8 fixed boards spread across five landscapes: meadow, forest, city, beach and snow.
Sequencing, one step at a time: what kids practice
- Planning before acting: the whole row is built before the puppy moves, so they have to picture the entire route first.
- Left and right, which plenty of young kids still mix up. Here you see straight away if the puppy heads off the wrong way.
- Counting steps: three squares to the log means three arrows, not one more.
- Finding the bug: the red arrow shows where the plan broke, and the child decides how to fix it.
- The idea of a loop, on the hard level: instead of three identical arrows, a single one with ×3.
On the classroom whiteboard
Put it up on the interactive whiteboard and the whole class plays. Children call out the arrows (“up, up, right!”) and someone comes up to tap them in. Before pressing ▶, it's worth asking whether the puppy will make it and letting everyone have a guess. If it bumps into something, the red arrow shows where the plan went wrong and the class works out the fix together. The boards are fixed, so two kids on medium board 5 are looking at exactly the same path and can compare how each of them solved it.
It works on computers, tablets and phones, with a finger, a mouse or the keyboard. It's free, it opens in the browser, and there's nothing to sign up for or download.
Frequently asked questions
What is a coding game for kids?
It's a game where the child doesn't move the character directly: they give it a list of instructions and then watch whether they work. That's already programming, even with no code and no words on screen. In Puppy Goes Home the instructions are arrows. It's free, it runs in the browser and there's no sign-up.
Is it a good coding game for kindergarten?
Yes. There's no reading involved, and the easy level works from about age 4, especially if an adult plays alongside at first and counts the squares with them. Medium and hard suit kids who already know left from right, roughly 6 to 8.
Is this like a Bee-Bot online game?
It's close. Bee-Bot is a bee-shaped floor robot that children program with arrow buttons and send across a grid mat. Here the idea is the same, but on screen and with a puppy. It's also a lot like the unplugged robot game, where one child plays the robot and the others call out the steps. They work well together: act it out first, then try it with the puppy.
What happens if they get it wrong?
The puppy runs as far as it can, barks and heads back to the start. The arrow that failed turns red and the rest of the row stays where it was, so nobody has to start over. Tapping an arrow in the row removes it, and ⌫ removes the last one. If there aren't enough arrows, it barks too and comes back. No score, no lives, no timer.
Does it work on a classroom interactive whiteboard?
Yes. The buttons are big enough to tap on a whiteboard, and it also works with a keyboard: the arrow keys add steps, Enter makes the puppy run and Backspace removes the last one. With no accounts to set up, it fits easily into an Hour of Code session with younger classes.
Bee-Bot and Hour of Code are trademarks of their respective owners; this game is not affiliated with them.
Puppy Goes Home is one of the 15 logic games on Amigoki.
