[jmccarthy]

I've built a few games with my son over the years. The fun part for us was all about fast iteration, and then laughing at the bugs together.

There are some other recommendations here for how to approach 3d, and he is specifically asking for 3d -- but I want to put in one more pitch for 2d: the fun-to-tedium ratio can be much higher.

I wonder if you could spend some time prototyping some of his ideas in LÖVE https://love2d.org/ -- if you show him the smallest sketch of something working, he might have an idea about what to add next.

Many years ago, on a flight, we went from 0 to game before we landed (with no experience) using LÖVE.