You don't need a game designer, a budget, or even much time to create a completely custom, one-of-a-kind interactive game for your adult day care clients. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and many other AI agents can each build you a fully playable, personalised game in under five minutes FOR FREE. YES! YOU HEARD IT RIGHT; IT DOESN'T COST YOU A PENNY. Ankota makes Adult Day Care software including activity calendars.
NO TECH BACKGROUND NEEDED. NO BUDGET REQUIRED. JUST 2 MINS AND AN INTERNET CONNECTION.
This article walks you through exactly how to do it, step by step, with the specific prompts that actually work. Whether your client loves classic cars, vintage country music, old movies, or Elvis (yes, there's a prompt for that), you can have a tailored trivia game, a word challenge, or a story game ready before next Tuesday's activity hour. Here's how...
Your Adult Day Care Activities Just Got a Serious UpgradeLet's be honest about something most activity coordinators won't say out loud: running the same bingo game for the fourth time this month feels as uninspired to you as it probably does to the clients who've played it a hundred times
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Nobody is blaming anyone, trust me, I get it. Activity coordination at an adult day care center is genuinely hard. You're trying to keep a diverse group of people, different abilities, different cognitive levels, different interests, different life histories, engaged, stimulated, and having a good time, on a budget that doesn't leave much room for commercial activity kits or specialty programming.
But something changed in the last couple of years. Quietly, without much fanfare in the care world, the three most powerful AI tools on the planet became available to everyone with an internet connection. For free. And one of the things they're remarkably good at (almost suspiciously good at) is creating customized, interactive games on demand.
(p.s. you can use any AI tool or agent out there using the same steps defined below, I just choose the most common ones)
Not generic games. Personalized ones. A trivia game about vintage Cadillacs because Robert in the front row has been a car guy his whole life. A word association game built around country music from the 1960s because that's what half your Thursday group grew up listening to. A memory story game featuring a bakery setting because Margaret ran a bakery for 35 years and her whole face lights up when someone mentions it.
Last spring I was visiting my mom's adult day center in central Florida and I showed the activity director how she could use ChatGPT to build a custom trivia game around whatever one of her clients had mentioned liking that week. My example was Patriotic Songs. She loved it, but said that her crowd would be much more into The Beatles or Bob Dylan, so we shifted gears and went with an "Easy Beatles trivia quiz." She told me that now she does this at least once a week."
-- Ken Accardi, Ankota CEO
i already wrote about the full range of physical and creative activity ideas for adult day care centers - the chair yoga, the craft projects, the sing-alongs, all of it. That article is still useful, and those activities still matter. But this article is specifically about what's new and what's possible right now that wasn't possible two years ago.
I am going to show you how to use three free AI tools to build completely custom games for your clients, and I am going to give you the exact prompts that work.
Before we get into the how, it's worth spending a minute on the why, because the case for personalized games in adult day care isn't just about keeping people entertained. The cognitive and emotional benefits are real and documented.
Personalized engagement works differently than generic programming. When a client encounters a game built around something they actually care about (for example, something from their life history, their passions, their long-term memory), a few things happen simultaneously:
Their attention sharpens.
Their confidence increases because they actually know things.
Their willingness to participate and compete goes up dramatically.
And for people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment, accessing long-term memory through familiar topics can unlock engagement that general trivia simply doesn't reach.
Research from the Alzheimer's Society has long supported reminiscence-based activities - the use of familiar, personal memories and topics to stimulate cognition and emotional well-being in people with dementia.
AI-generated personalized games are, in effect, a scalable way to deliver reminiscence-based engagement without requiring a clinical specialist to design each session.
The other benefits are practical and real for the center:
It's completely free. Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini all have free tiers that are more than sufficient for generating activity games. You are not buying anything.
It's infinitely variable. You can generate a different game every single day for the rest of the year and never repeat yourself.
It scales to your group. You can make a group trivia game for 15 people or a gentle one-on-one word game for a client who is having a quieter day.
It takes two minutes (MAX 5 MINUTES DEPENDING ON YOUR SPEED). Once you know the prompts, this is genuinely faster than finding a commercial activity kit, setting it up, and explaining the rules.
And it's one of those rare things that makes a real difference in how your center is perceived. Families notice when their person comes home talking about a game that was literally built around their father's love of vintage Ford Mustangs.
That kind of personalization is a differentiator that no competitor can copy without doing exactly the same work. For the broader picture of what separates centers that thrive from centers that plateau, our guide to how to differentiate your adult day care center is worth reading alongside this one.
You've probably heard of ChatGPT. You may have heard of Gemini. Claude might be less familiar. Here's what you need to know about each one:
ChatGPT (by OpenAI) is the most widely known. It's excellent at structured game formats, e.g., trivia, fill-in-the-blank, word games and very good at adapting tone to be warm, encouraging, and appropriate for older adults. Free at chatgpt.com
Gemini (by Google) is Google's AI. It tends to be particularly good at generating visual descriptions and creating games with a storytelling element. If you want a game that feels like a journey or an adventure, Gemini often produces wonderful results. Free at gemini.google.com.
Claude (by Anthropic) is exceptional at following detailed instructions precisely and maintaining a consistent tone throughout a long game. If you want a game with multiple rounds, specific rules, and a particular character voice, Claude is outstanding. Free at claude.com
They're all free. They're all capable. The small differences in personality mean that over time you'll find yourself reaching for one or another depending on what you're making. But for getting started today, any one of them will work beautifully. Let's walk through each one.
Go to chat.openai.com. Click "Sign up" and create a free account with your email. You don't need to pay for anything, the free version is fully sufficient for generating activity games. Once you're signed in, you'll see a text box at the bottom of the screen. That's where you type your prompt.
Copy this exactly and paste it into the chat box, filling in the bracketed parts for your specific client or group:
ChatGPT will generate the full game in about 30 seconds. You candisplay it on your monitor with full screen and the participant can play it anytime.
So, I put the same prompt I mentioned above and this is what chatgpt gave me:
If you want changes, easier questions, a different tone, more questions, fewer, just type what you want.
Try: "Can you make questions 3 and 7 a bit easier?" or "Can you add 5 more questions about [specific subtopic]?" It will update immediately.
Go to gemini.google.com. If you have a Gmail account, you're already most of the way there, sign in with your Google account and you'll have immediate access. If you don't have a Google account, sign up for one.
Gemini shines at storytelling games. Try this one:
This type of game works particularly well for groups that include clients with dementia or memory challenges because you're not testing their knowledge, you're inviting their memories. There are no wrong answers, only shared stories. The facilitator reads the story sections aloud and the group participates as much or as little as they'd like.
So, I followed the steps and this is what gemini gave me:
Gemini usually just gives you an html code, but don't worry, you can convert this code into a game in 3 easy steps:
Voila! Just open the file after saving it and the game pops up in your browser in seconds
To customize, just tell Gemini what to change: "Can you set the story in a church community hall instead of a diner?" or "One of my clients was a nurse for 40 years ,can you add a section that takes the story into a hospital waiting room?" Done in seconds.
Go to claude.com. Click "Sign up" and create a free account with your email. Claude's free tier is generous and more than sufficient for activity planning.
Claude is exceptional at multi-round games with rules and structure. Here's a prompt that produces a genuinely fun, word game that can be replayed:
Create an interactive "name that ..." quiz game for a group of older adults at an adult day care center. The theme is [— e.g., "American muscle cars of the 1960s", "cities on a map", "song covers"]. The game works like this: [enter game instructions, for example a car illustration appears on screen alongside four answer choices] — the host reads the clue aloud, the group discusses, and someone selects an answer. No typing required. Set up the game with:
Tone: warm, respectful, never childish. Think of a classic game show that treats its contestants as intelligent adults who happen to enjoy a good time. Give me a ready to be played, visual mockup.
This game format is particularly flexible and engaging. For me, claude was the clear winner. I am attaching the game that claude made for me, using the same prompt mentioned above.
To personalize further: "One of my clients is a retired teacher. Can you add a starting word set themed around school and education?" Claude will add it in immediately.
Here's where this gets genuinely special. The prompts above work great for a whole group. But AI really shines when you personalize for a single client — and the level of customization you can achieve in a few sentences is remarkable.
The idea is simple: before a one-on-one activity session, or before a smaller group session where you want to honor a specific person, take 30 seconds to tell the AI who you're working with and what they love. Then ask it to build a game around that.
For someone who loved cars: "Build a trivia game for an 81-year-old man who worked as a mechanic for 50 years and knows everything about American muscle cars from the 1960s and 1970s. Make it genuinely challenging, he'll enjoy the difficulty. Include questions about specific models, engine specs, and famous races."
For someone with dementia who loves music: "Create a gentle music identification game for a woman with mid-stage Alzheimer's who responds very well to music from the 1950s. Give me 10 song titles and their first lines. I'll hum or sing the opening bars and she guesses the song. Frame it in a warm, celebratory way where there's no wrong answer, just recognition and joy."
For someone who was a home cook: "Build a 'finish the recipe' game for a woman who spent decades cooking for her family and knows traditional Southern cooking inside out. Give me 10 classic Southern dishes with one ingredient mysteriously 'missing', she has to figure out what it is. Keep it conversational and celebratory, like she's the expert and we're the students."
For a mixed ability group: "I have a group of 8 adults with varying cognitive abilities, some sharp, some with moderate memory challenges, one with a developmental disability who communicates with short phrases. Create a picture description game where I describe something from the 1950s or 60s in vivid detail and they guess what it is. No reading required for participants, just listening and guessing. Make it joyful and very accessible."
The output will be something genuinely tailored that no commercially produced activity kit could replicate. And that client, on that day, had something made just for them. That's not a small thing.
A few things learned from actually running AI-generated games in care settings, so you don't have to figure them out the hard way:
Generate the game the night before or that morning. It takes five minutes max. Don't try to generate it live in front of the group.
Print it or read it from a large font on screen. If you're running a trivia game, either print the questions large enough to read comfortably, or display them on a TV or large monitor. For storytelling games, reading aloud yourself usually works better than showing text on screen.
You don't have to use everything the AI generates. If a question feels too hard or too obscure for your group, skip it. If a story section is too long, summarize it. You're the facilitator!!! t
Ask follow-up questions in the AI. The game doesn't have to end when the AI's output ends. If a question about old Hollywood produces a lively discussion, you can immediately ask the AI: "Give me 5 more questions specifically about Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly" and keep the momentum going.
Save the games you love. If a particular trivia theme went brilliantly, save that game (or the prompt that created it) so you can recreate it in six months with a slightly different set of questions. Building a library of your best prompts is one of the highest-value things you can do.
If anyone on your team, or any family member, raises an eyebrow at "AI-generated games," this section is for them.
It's worth noting what AI games are not: they're not replacing human connection, therapeutic relationships, or the physical activities that matter for mobility and health. A trivia game about 1960s Ford trucks doesn't replace chair yoga or a caregiver relationship. It adds to the activity mix in a way that's uniquely powerful for cognitive engagement and personal dignity.
For the full picture of what a high-quality adult day care activity program looks like, our guide to activity tracking in adult day care covers how to document and measure engagement across your entire program - which matters when you're demonstrating outcomes to families, funders, and licensing bodies.
And as the agencies that will thrive through 2030 are those that blend human and digital care, the centers that figure out how to use these tools now — before they become industry standard — will have a meaningful head start in quality, differentiation, and the kind of client and family satisfaction that drives referrals and retention.
The games you create with AI sit on top of an operational foundation that Ankota supports - attendance tracking, activity documentation, compliance reporting, and billing - so that the great programming you deliver gets properly recorded and credited. In adult day care, demonstrating that your center provides meaningful, individualized engagement isn't just good practice. It's often a licensing requirement, a funder expectation, and the most powerful marketing tool you have with families evaluating care options.
When your activity coordinator runs a custom trivia game on a Tuesday, Ankota's activity tracking captures that it happened, who participated, and how it connected to each client's care plan. That documentation is what turns a great activity into a defensible service record and what gives families the visibility into their loved one's day that builds lasting trust.
Compliance in adult day services increasingly requires exactly this kind of structured activity documentation, and having software that makes it easy is what separates centers running sustainably from centers drowning in administrative burden.
For centers thinking about how AI tools fit into a broader technology strategy, the conversation about differentiating your adult day care center in an increasingly competitive market is the right frame. Free AI activity generation is one tool. Connected software that runs your operations without adding administrative load is another. Together, they're what a center looks like when it's set up to grow.
Want to see how Ankota's activity tracking and adult day care management tools support the kind of personalized programming this article describes? Talk to our team — we'll walk through how the platform handles attendance, activity documentation, billing, and compliance so your staff spends their time on clients, not paperwork.
No. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude all have free tiers that are fully sufficient for generating activity games. You create a free account with your email, type your prompt, and get your game — no credit card, no subscription required. The free versions of all three tools will handle everything described in this article without limitation.
How long does it actually take to create a game using AI?Once you have an account set up (which takes about two minutes the first time), creating a game takes roughly three to five minutes — one to two minutes to write or customize your prompt, and another 30 seconds for the AI to generate the output. The personalization work — thinking about what a specific client loves and weaving that into the prompt — is usually the most time-consuming part, and that rarely takes more than a minute of reflection. Total real-world time for an experienced user: under five minutes.
Can these games work for clients with dementia or cognitive impairment?Yes — and in some ways, they work better for clients with cognitive impairment than generic activities do. The key is prompting the AI to build games around long-term memory (which is often better preserved in dementia) rather than short-term recall. Always prompt the AI to keep difficulty appropriate and tone warm and non-pressuring.
What are the best themes for adult day care AI games?The themes that tend to produce the most engaged responses are the ones drawn from the life experiences of the specific generation in your center — typically adults who grew up in the 1940s through 1970s. Strong performers include: classic American cars and road trips; vintage country, jazz, or rock and roll music; old Hollywood films and TV shows; traditional cooking and family recipes; seasonal farming and garden work; sports history (baseball, boxing, football); local geography and hometown memories; and holiday and community traditions. The more specific you can be — not "classic cars" but "1960s American muscle cars" — the better the game will be. For a full catalog of activity categories that work well across different populations, our comprehensive adult day care activity ideas guide is a useful companion to this article.
Can I use AI to create games for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities?Absolutely — and the personalization capability is especially valuable here. Adults with IDD often have very specific, intense interests that generic activity programming doesn't speak to. An AI game built around a specific client's love of trains, a particular TV show, a specific type of animal, or a favorite sport can produce a level of engagement that generic bingo or word searches never will. The key is prompting the AI to calibrate difficulty and language to the specific cognitive and communication level of the individual.
How do I make sure the games are age-appropriate and safe?The AI tools described here are generally conservative and appropriate in their outputs for adult care settings. The main things to specify in your prompt are: the audience (older adults, adult day care setting), the desired tone (warm, encouraging, non-pressuring), and any sensitivity considerations (avoid questions that might feel embarrassing if someone doesn't know the answer). Reading through the generated game before the session takes about two minutes and lets you catch anything that doesn't feel right for your specific group. In practice, the outputs for the care-oriented prompts in this article are consistently appropriate, but a quick human review before running any game with clients is always good practice.
Ankota's mission is to enable the Heroes who keep older and disabled people living at home to focus on care because we take care of the tech. If you need software for home care, EVV, I/DD Services, Self-Direction FMS, Adult Day Care centers, or Caregiver Recruiting, please Contact Ankota. And if you're ready to see how the most innovative agencies are using AI to empower their caregivers and automate the rest, meet your new companion at www.kota.care.