Your daughter's awesome! She's going places. But you already knew that :) And you're awesome too for encouraging her by sharing her work and helping her with it.

I don't have feedback on the game so I'll just recommend a book which I think is readable for a 12 year old (I'd also recommend it to anyone here): "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" (https://www.theoryoffun.com). It's a great introduction to game design and it's full of fun cartoons.

Raph Koster has a good book, "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", which I think does a pretty good job as an easy read intro to the problem.

My main takeaway from it, if I had to boil it down to one point, is your brain finds fun in mastering something (beating a challenge), but not so much afterwards (boring/repetitive) or if it's too difficult (frustrating). The problem is, where that line is for any given challenge can be different for everyone. You can also get more mileage out of something if an aspect of the challenge changes (people will play chess longer than tic tac toe for example, even though the game space is the same each time).

Well don't forget to read the part where I split it into three tasks - the web part, the game engine part, and the game design part. For game design, I highly recommend A Theory of Fun for Game Design [1] and the column Making Magic by the head designer for Magic: The Gathering[2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Fun-Game-Design-ebook/dp/B004D4... only $4 on Kindle or $12 on paper

[2] Look for the ones he gives 4 and 5 stars. WARNING: Lots of reading

About to start A Theory of Fun for Game Design.

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449...

I have no interest in making games, but this comes highly recommended to understand applied intrinsic motivation (which I am very interested in). Grabbed it from the worrydream book list.

http://worrydream.com/#!/Links

Completing the above, now for UX:

— Start by reading "Designing with the mind in mind" by Jeff Johnson (http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-In...)

— Now you understand that UX design is actually cognitive psychology + sociology. Of course, most cognitive psychology/sociology books will only be slightly relevant to UX design. Here's a short selection to get you started:

— Don Norman, Design of Everyday Objects

— Don Norman, Emotional Design

— Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater

— Kim Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Servicesa

— Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions

Bonus:

— Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design (meant for video game design, but has a lot of lessons that can be applied to good UX)

For UI design, I'd also heavily recommend "Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps" by Jacques Bertin, and anything by Tufte. These titles are more about data visualization, but most UIs need a way to visualize data in some shape or form.

One point that msutherl forgot in his fantastic comment is animation (as in, 2D animation). UIs are not static things, and animators have spent decades understanding how we react emotionally to animations (Good introductory read: http://labs.oracle.com/techrep/1995/smli_tr-95-33.pdf). Good animation in a UI makes a whole lot of difference— Apple knows that (http://watchingapple.com/2007/06/are-apple-ui-designers-lear...).

For this, only one resource: "The Animator's Survival Kit", by Richard Williams.

Steve Reich’s Clapping Music aims to teach people how to perform a piece of contemporary music from the ground up:
http://clappingmusicapp.com/

[full disclosure] I developed this. We collaborated with London Sinfonietta Orchestra to get the pedagogy right.

We aimed to make a game that is both engaging and addictive, whilst also teaching real musical skill (in contrast to say Guitar Hero :o). The pedagogy and game mechanics did clash into each other during development, we did a lot of user testing to find a balance. Raph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Design was invaluable, as were lectures and posts by Daniel Cook.

It's a hard game, especially for people with no musical background, but nonetheless we had strong engagement.

Players who topped the leaderboard after a few months were invited to perform at a live event. They were pretty good, but then I didn't see them perform before they played the game.

Doesn’t hurt to jump start that loop iteration by taking in some principles and interrogations.

Two little books that can help:

1. From A Theory of Fun book blurb:

“A Theory of Fun for Game Design is not your typical how-to book. It features a novel way of teaching interactive designers how to create and improve their designs to incorporate the highest degree of fun. As the book shows, designing for fun is all about making interactive products like games highly entertaining, engaging, and addictive.”

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1932111972/

2. See also The Art of Game Design:

”Over 100 sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design. Written by one of the world's top game designers, this book describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design, demonstrating how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in video games. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.“

https://smile.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Third/dp/113...

Always go back to the classics

* The Design of Everyday Things
* Design for the Real World
* A Pattern Language
* Notes on the Synthesis of Form
* Never Leave Well Enough Alone
* Don't Make Me Think
* How Things Don't Work
* Usable Usability
* The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
* A Theory of Fun for Game Design

Other left-field books I've found myself going back to for design inspiration more than I would've thought

* The Death and Life of Great American Cities
* The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
* Influence by Robert Caldini
* Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
* The Art of Looking Sideways
* Cosmos
* Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
* The Theory of Moral Sentiments

And just specifically for computer UX, Smashing UX Design is a pretty good crash course.

I read this book a few years back when I was interested in making games as a hobby.

I think it's a good one-stop source for game design. If you had to read one single book on game design, it should be this one, as it covers many topics far and wide. I particularly love the blend of academic focus and industry/professional experience that the authors instil into it.

On the other hand, the book is overly verbose and sometimes beats around the bush before making a point.

Finally the Commissioned games chapters are fantastic. The authors ask a professional game designer to create a game based on a set of restrictions, and then these write up the process that they went through.

For completeness I include a 1 sentence review of other game design books:

A Theory of Fun for Game Design: It probably won't blow away your world, but it is such a quick and fun book that you might as well give it a go.

Challenges for Games Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers: The premise is simple, each chapter briefly explains a game design concept, and then offers a set of design challenges that the reader has to go through. I love the conciseness of each chapter, opposed to the verbosity of Rules of Play. Be warned though, if you don’t do the design challenges in the book, you are missing over 90% of the point.

Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design: This book is much more applied and specific that, say, Rules of Play. It gives concrete and actionable advise on specific design challenges. On the other hand some is lost with such a narrow focus. For instance, much of the advise is oriented towards very specific genres of games.

The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses: On this book Jesse Schell analyses game design from a different ‘lens’ on each chapter. The book contains a blend of theoretical analysis and practical experience. Maybe it’s biggest weakness is that it is still limited by the experiences of a single author. Overall a very round and well balanced book.

Game Design Workshop: Having read the other books I didn’t feel this one brings anything particular to the table. It is another all-in-one book whose content is covered to some extent by any other of the previous books. The Designer perspective sections on each chapter are quite interesting.

Not to be too literal, but to answer the kid's question, "What are games good for?" Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design sets out to answer just this. Essentially his argument boils down to that games are made to teach us things, that they can be used for amusement, and that they allow us to have experiences that paintings, film, or music don't have the capacity to deliver.