The capacity for playing together came into question when my treatment of 8-year-old Chloe moved to Zoom. It was the start of the pandemic. What happened to our play? How would the disruption of Chloe’s familiar way of being in the world, including our familiar way of going-on-playing together, impact her development? This paper demonstrates that challenges do not stop development; rather they inspire new strategies. Using an intersubjective systems approach, this paper furthers ideas about playing and about development. It explores what may be transpiring between analyst and patient when the play is thwarted; and it illustrates how new vital developmental pathways are cocreated even under dire circumstances. While the process described is specific to one dyad in the context of the pandemic lockdown, the underlying understandings of social matrix and individual development are applicable at any age, to treatments with children and adults alike.