With the increased emergence of digital technology in the school context it is important to be aware of the fact that children’s use of digital technologies is conditioned by gender. In this paper we investigate how gender differences emerge in collaborative interactions between 9 to 10-year-old school children while collaboratively working on developing digital game-based designs. The unit of analysis is game design activities with a focus on children’s gendered actions, positionings and agency while collaborating and working with problem solving activities. The research questions posed in the study are: (1) What gender-related patterns emerges in collaborative interaction exhibited by 9 to 10-year-old school children while collaboratively engaged in a digital game-based design workshop involving problem solving activities? (2) How do 9 to 10-year-old girls and boys position themselves while collaboratively engaged in a digital game-based design workshop involving problem solving activities? (3) How do 9 to 10 year-old girls and boys employ their agency while collaboratively engaged in a digital game-based design workshop involving problem solving activities? The results of this study imply that children’s agency oscillate between individual freedom and the constraint of traditional gender patterns while collaboratively engaged in a digital game-based design workshop involving problem solving activities. As a consequence, this tends to affect the children’s participation and contribution to the given task. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.