Ten-year-old Dylan Viale and his grandmother, Sherry Nissen, share a very special bond. They go to the movies together and walk dogs together. According to video games blog Kotaku, the pair recently went to a Lego event in San Francisco where they helped build a giant Lego Yoda Santa.
All pretty impressive considering that Sherry has been blind for decades.
Despite all the good times they shared, there was one thing that Dylan and his grandmother were not able to do together.
Dylan's favorite past-time: video games.
"I like video games and I wanted to find a way for her to experience that," Dylan, who attends Hidden Valley Elementary School in Martinez, Calif., told InsideBayArea.com.
So, taking matters into his own hands, the innovative fifth-grader learned how to use a game design application called GameMaker and got to work creating a new video game for the blind, Patch.com reports.
"[Dylan] wanted to figure out a way that he could share his love for video games with her," Dylan's father, Dino Viale, told Kotaku. "He thought, 'How can I create something she can enjoy?'"
Called Quacky's Quest, Dylan created a video game that follows the movements of a duck that relies on sounds rather than visuals. To play, a person who is not visually-impaired must wear a blindfold.
"I wanted to find out if my grandma can [play] my game… and she did," Dylan told Patch.com.
According to Dylan's father, Sherry can now "fly through the maze quite quickly".
After spending over 30 hours on the game's development and design, Dylan entered Quacky's Quest in the his elementary school's science fair, InsideBayArea.com reports.
It won first place.
His mother, Kelly, told Patch.com that she "very, very proud" of her son and both parents expressed that they would encourage him to pursue a career in video game development.