Play is an essential aspect of children’s development, yet it is often overlooked by planners when designing playgrounds. Research shows three key principles that children prefer playgrounds, providing freedom, excitement, and surprises. Nevertheless, many existing playgrounds fail to embrace these principles, resulting in suboptimal use or even abandonment. With the generation shift, particularly the emergence of the Alpha generation, it becomes important to understand these children’s play patterns and preferences to create sustainable playgrounds—an aim of this research. This research is exploratory, with qualitative methodology through pictures and interviews, meanwhile, quantitative data was employed to observe trends. Based on play patterns, children draw their ideal playground, and interpretation of the images is carried out as a basis for analysis. In-depth interviews were conducted with random student to verify the consistency between their drawings and verbal responses. Carried out in an urban context, in Tangerang City, Indonesia, involving 72 fifth and sixth-grade students from Sekolah Tiga Penuai Indonesia, a private school. These findings suggest that sustainable playgrounds can be achieved by combining three design elements: 1) a nature-inspired playground featuring trees and water; 2) traditional play structures such as swings and slides; and 3) a design that offers challenges and stimulates adrenaline through more adventurous activities.