[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
My 11 year old has a lot of interest in creating games. They are a
very creative kid currently experimenting with using Power
Point/Google Presentations to create a crafting and turn based
combat style game but is running into the obvious limitations of
this setup. They have some very rudimentary understanding of coding
(together we recently created a command line version of Rock Paper
Scissors Lizard Spock from scratch in Python and they were able to
follow along the whole way), but I don't think their best bet is to
start with a code first platform just yet. Maybe something with
scripting capabilities when they need them but mostly with the
ability to create a point and click interface with something
specific happening on each click. Does anyone know what's out
there that would work for them in this case? FWIW I don't know Lua
but anything with JavaScript or Python built in would make it easy
for me to help them. Thanks in advance!
Author : IgorPartola
Score : 229 points
Date : 2024-09-20 19:39 UTC (5 days ago)
| burkaman wrote:
| You could look at Adventure Game Studio:
| https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/. It does require some
| scripting, but you can get away with very basic stuff. Here's an
| overview of the scripting language:
| https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/ags/tutorial/scri....
|
| Another option I have not tried myself is GDevelop:
| https://gdevelop.io/. It looks like you can get pretty far
| without any code at all, although you do that with an "events"
| editor that is basically a simple visual scripting language.
| a1o wrote:
| The updated manual for AGS is maintained in GitHub, a tutorial
| is here with some screens of the Editor
| https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/acintro1.ht...
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Roblox Studio is a very powerful system, my 8 year old has played
| around with it to make simple maps and obbys. People have coded
| Call of Duty style games on Roblox (such as Frontlines) so it's
| pretty surprising how far you can stretch the engine.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I remember a few post of games made by children in Scratch
| https://scratch.mit.edu/
|
| For example:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23892698
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26050913
|
| (My daughter tried to use Scratch, but it's too difficult to
| cut&paste and move blocks of code, she preferred a text based
| programming language, so YMMV.)
| Triphibian wrote:
| My 11-year-old still enjoys scratch -- he watches YouTubers
| like Grifpatch to learn higher level concepts.
|
| There's also PenguinMod which feels like Scratch with more
| assets.
| davesmylie wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of scratch (for obvious reasons I'm not the
| target audience!), but my 10 year old can't get enough of it.
|
| Recently we started digging into some of the more "advanced"
| concepts (basically arrays and functions) and I was surprised
| how far you could actually get with the system.
|
| I'm trying to move him off scratch on to something text based,
| but imo for a kid it's hard to go wrong starting with Scratch.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| The social angle of sharing ones games with friends and
| getting likes etc. and the ability to quickly play it off a
| link are huge factors that keep motivation high for kids.
|
| This is underappreciated. I've been teaching my son JS but
| his main gripe is that he doesn't have an easy way to share
| his stuff in a quickly playable format.
| szvsw wrote:
| Time to teach him nextjs and get him deploying to vercel!!
| (Or at least set up a template for him!)
|
| Also, out of curiosity, have you been teaching him JS or
| TS? I feel like it is a sin to not use TS these days, but
| not sure if it makes it easier or harder for a new young
| programmer to learn.
| lytedev wrote:
| val.town or something similar may be an option?
| abrookewood wrote:
| Scratch is fantastic.
|
| There are also a number of similar (block-based) tools that let
| you create your own custom blocks and see the code behind them
| - e.g. Blockly (https://developers.google.com/blockly)
| chii wrote:
| you can also use microsoft's https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/makecode
|
| it's slightly more user friendly imho, and you could do some
| more advanced stuff than scratch (i mean advanced as in using
| text, rather than blocks).
| dunham wrote:
| I also like that you can get a pybadge or similar device and
| run your creations on it.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| On a smaller scale, there's an entire genre of 'interactive
| fiction' text games a la Zork. The scripting / authoring is
| fairly easy to pick up. https://textadventures.co.uk/
| dtagames wrote:
| Microsoft MakeCode Arcade is terrific. It has both a block
| interface and real Typescript under the hood, and you can switch
| back and forth anytime.
| jaustin wrote:
| MakeCode Arcade also has the ability to put your games on
| physical hardware, which can be a game changer for engagement.
| A simple game on a 128x256 grid can feel a bit "rubbish" on a
| laptop screen, but put it on something with a Gameboy form
| factor and it comes into its own.
|
| Arcade also has amazing editors for sound, sprites, etc.
|
| Here's Flappy Bird
| https://arcade.makecode.com/88444-57913-28610-31751 (Not made
| by me!)
| brudgers wrote:
| [random parental advice from the internet]
|
| Pick an adult solution and sit with them to provide adult
| guidance. You are at the stage where your relationship with your
| child becomes peer to peer.
|
| If game programming stays their jam, you will be learning game
| programming from them in the blink of an eye. It's joyous and
| wonderful and only gets better.
|
| Sure you will miss them being a small child, but you will know an
| amazing adult. (and they will always be a small child sometimes
| just as we all are).
|
| The platform doesn't matter. Your relationship does. Good luck.
| caseyy wrote:
| I'd argue against this. If the tool is too difficult, kids
| often lose interest. So it can have an adverse effect.
|
| As much as I'd want to teach my 11 year old kid Unreal Engine,
| it's not realistic. Pun not intended.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I think it depends on the child and parent.
|
| My approach with my kids has always been "don't dumb it
| down". They may not be into programming, but at least they'll
| be exposed to it.
|
| By giving them the 'easy' version, you are putting up
| barriers that don't need to be there. Kids are smarter than
| many adults give them credit for, but again, it depends on
| the kid.
| brudgers wrote:
| You would be teaching a soon-to-be-adult about the adult
| world. The game engine is entirely incidental to developing a
| peer to peer relationship.
|
| Their interest in spending time with you will diminish. That
| reality is the one to optimize for. Recreational interests
| come and go and come back sometimes. But most don't stick.
|
| Learning Unreal Engine with your 11 year old is possible, but
| not for more than year.
| AlexITC wrote:
| I have done this, it can work with some kids, still, its too
| much work.
|
| At this age, I think it is more important to keep them
| motivated and find ways to use their creativity than to get
| them through the pains of debugging and learning too many
| technical concepts, even simple details like learning about
| image formats, how to reference them, case-sensitiveness are
| just obstacles against meeting their goals.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I feel like we don't give kids enough credit. Game devs who
| started in the 70s and 80s learned BASIC and all the
| technicalities of their platforms back then, some eventually
| moving to Pascal, C, or Assembly. The platforms had fewer
| variables back then (code running in real mode, your machine
| was identical to others of the same platform), but kids were
| still able to learn the minutiae of the Apple II or Commodore
| 64.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| pico-8
| natt941 wrote:
| +1 to this, my son really enjoys programming for pico-8
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yes, it's very accessible. My son wrote a game on it (with a
| lot of help from me, but he got it).
| ChristopherDrum wrote:
| +1 on this. Even as an adult I found other game authoring
| systems too complex to jump into and feel comfortable with (as
| a hobbyist). Pico-8 was the fastest, easiest "I'm thinking of
| something" to "I'm seeing something happen on screen" iterative
| development cycle and a joy to use. Plus, a great community of
| people willing to help on lexaloffle.com and especially
| Discord. Some great YouTube tutorials out there as well.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I learned to code games in QuickBASIC, and pico 8 to me is
| the closest experience I ever had to that. The tools for
| putting something on the screen are immediately available
| with no infrastructure work required. You don't need to
| create a window, load files, choose a screen mode or
| anything. You just draw a sprite in the sprite editor and
| call `spr`
| gcheong wrote:
| Game maker studio might fit the bill: https://gamemaker.io/en
| throwup238 wrote:
| +1 for GameMaker, though I used it about 20 years ago as a kid.
| I don't know how well its developed since then.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| +1 for GM
| daviddoran wrote:
| Like other commenters I used Game Maker 20 or so years ago and
| not only made games but also programmed little utilities to
| solve problems at my Dad's work. It was a phenomenal blank
| canvas for creating games and programs and learning to program
| (because there's both Scratch-style drag and drop programming,
| and a programming language).
| jaredandrews wrote:
| This is what I used when I was 11. Been 15 years since I last
| used it, so no idea how much it's changed. The thing that was
| nice about Game Maker for young me, was that it had a drag and
| drop and programming language interface and you could switch
| between the two pretty seamlessly. This really helped me learn
| how to code early on.
| xahrepap wrote:
| +1 here. I've been facilitating a video game maker club for
| kids aged 11-15. I have ~7 kids who come. Most kids are 11-13
| but 2 are 15.
|
| Since they're all new to programming in general the club has
| mostly been me teaching them. The kids are having a ton of fun.
| It's slow moving. But they love it.
|
| They also have the GUI scripting instead of the javascript. I
| haven't actually tried it.
| cableshaft wrote:
| If you don't mind doing choose your own adventure style stories,
| I'd recommend Twine. It's a low-to-no code way to write branching
| stories, and you can add variables and conditional branching if
| you want to add a little bit of code. It creates a playable
| website of your story when it compiles.
|
| I do a lot of heavy coding but I still play around with Twine
| sometimes because it's fun. I also sometimes prototype the
| branching dialogue and/or story in my games using that as a tool
| as well, because I don't have to code anything.
|
| https://twinery.org/
|
| There's also a subreddit for discussing twine games:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/twinegames/
|
| A couple examples of how far you can take the engine:
| https://pseudavid.itch.io/the-master-of-the-land
|
| And this one is super addicting. I played it 12 times in a row
| after trying it: https://johnayliff.itch.io/seedship
| duskwuff wrote:
| Seconding this! Twine is the ideal next step for the hypertext-
| style games OP describes their child having made - it's
| designed around that exact paradigm of game design, just with
| more powerful tools.
| smcin wrote:
| And if they use Twine (or other) to create text adventure
| stories, then they should also look at the annual IFComp (The
| Interactive Fiction Competition) https://ifcomp.org/
|
| Several winning entries have been written by children or
| teenagers, with some help from parents.
| Loughla wrote:
| That's awesome. Thanks!
| andai wrote:
| When I was that age I made a bouncing ball in Flash
| (ActionScript, similar to JS).[0]
|
| This is still my "hello world" when trying out a new game dev
| environment because it covers:
|
| - drawing
|
| - movement
|
| - input
|
| - acceleration
|
| - gravity
|
| - friction
|
| - collision
|
| And all of these in essentially the simplest possible way.
|
| Most of all, it's a lot of fun to have a bouncing ball, and even
| more fun if you can use the keyboard or mouse to play with it!
|
| For a more structured approach, I'd say draw a circle (or
| square), then add movement, then make it fall down, then a floor
| to catch it, then bounce it, etc...
|
| [0] It's not too hard to do in pure JS / Canvas (I am very fond
| of tiny builds with no dependencies), tho the canvas API is
| surprisingly unpleasant, so I'd recommend something like Pixi or
| Phaser.
| rkhassen9 wrote:
| I still lament the loss of Flash. It's ability to get in there
| and as a single user do everything from design to animation to
| code front end and back end was enormously flexible and easy
| for creatively engaging and creating. It fit the "bicycle of
| the mind" concept.
|
| As far as I know, no single tool has replicated that kind of
| freedom. For rapid prototypes that one could actually
| iteratively build on top of top make a full application it was
| amazing.
|
| I know about the issues and why it isn't secure etc etc, but in
| terms of you could interact with it to create we are still at a
| loss.
| andai wrote:
| I've dreamed of cloning Flash for a long time. Aiming for
| full compatibility is infeasible (unless you can convince the
| Ruffle folks to give it a go once they're done with Ruffle!),
| but aiming to capture the _spirit_ of Flash (e.g. build Flash
| like authoring tools on top of TS /WebGL) is certainly
| doable.
|
| The Wick editor was one such attempt, though it didn't gain
| traction and was abandoned.
|
| Also there seem to be quite a lot of us who feel this way --
| a dozen or more every time Flash is mentioned on HN -- maybe
| it's time we got organized? "Everybody talks about the
| weather but nobody ever does anything about it!"
| lukan wrote:
| I feel you.
|
| I have looked at the Wick Editors source code and managed a
| sucessful build with some minor changes and felt picking it
| up is doable, but not easy. But a satisfying way to
| develope for me, would require a rewrite of many parts. Or
| most parts, except the UI ..
|
| Pixi as the graphical base would be the way, I think.
|
| But I could not do it as a side project as of now, maybe
| one bright other day.
| BatFastard wrote:
| Have you checked out https://haxe.org/ It supports Action
| script, and is the spiritual successor to Flash
| HKH2 wrote:
| When HTML5 was supposed to replace Flash, I just thought I
| didn't know enough about HTML5. Turns out that it was never
| an adequate replacement and it was just more Web 2.0
| sterility.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, I miss silly flash games and 0 other applications
| of flash. I can see why people miss it from a creator point
| of view, but it was extremely annoying in general.
| HKH2 wrote:
| It was great for animation with interactions. Also, flash
| files could easily be saved and shared offline.
| relaxing wrote:
| For anyone wanting to do this in JS, check out Dan Shiffman's
| _Nature of Code_ https://natureofcode.com/
|
| Uses p5js, so nicer than pure canvas.
|
| Note there's a big leap from making a simple physics toy to
| making a _game_.
| andai wrote:
| I actually turned my "ball that can accelerate with keyboard
| input" into a physics puzzle platformer with minimal
| additional code (platform collision).
|
| I rebranded the ball to a box and made it so it plays a
| rocket animation in each (opposite) direction when you press
| the arrow keys. (In Flash, this was trivial!)
|
| Made it so you had a certain amount of fuel and had to land
| to refuel.
|
| I remember all of this taking a day or so, but I might be
| misremembering.
|
| I had it mostly working but then I changed something, broke
| it, and didn't know how to fix it. (Box kept sinking through
| the floor)
|
| These days I'd probably just use Box2D hahah
| bemmu wrote:
| Many bouncing balls are also doable without knowing any actual
| physics. Balls overlap? Push them away from each other such
| that the next frame they'd no longer overlap. The result looks
| surprisingly acceptable.
|
| And if you add some blur (I think in Flash this was just a
| property you can set) based on how fast the ball is moving, it
| somehow looks more satisfying still.
| andai wrote:
| One of my favorite projects was a bouncing ball sim synced
| over the network. So you could mess with the balls in one
| window and it would update in the other too. I never added
| ball-on-ball action though...
| bluesmoon wrote:
| Not specifically game related, but adjacent. Sonic Pi
| (https://sonic-pi.net/) is designed for making music specifically
| with kids in mind, and they might accidentally learn a whole
| bunch of programming concepts as a side-effect.
| AshleysBrain wrote:
| We make Construct 3: https://editor.construct.net
|
| You can start with a visual block-based system and move on to
| JavaScript/TypeScript. We have a lot of schools using it to help
| teach programming concepts in a fun way. Happy to answer any
| questions!
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| I had a blast with Klik'n'Play as a kid. The modern version is
| called Clickteam Fusion. Revisited it a while ago with my nephew,
| it has a pretty good tutorial.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickteam
| thecopy wrote:
| When i was young i started with Power Point too, then i started
| using "The Games Factory" from Clickteam. I think thats what
| started my programming path.
| keb_ wrote:
| My 11 year old cousin loves Scratch. He's made several games and
| "movies" using it.
|
| Another more powerful alternative is Stencyl:
| https://stencyl.com/
| pokpokpok wrote:
| try websim.ai or roblox studio
| Matheus28 wrote:
| Have you tried RPG Maker? It's really fun. I remember using it as
| a kid. It's focused on turn based combat.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Ive heard good things about gamemaker, as well as RPGmaker. there
| was one I used to mess around with as a kid I think it was one of
| those two but cant quite recall. pretty sure it was something
| maker though. The important thing is to think about the process
| of making the game. getting the concept together, making a
| story..
| readyplayernull wrote:
| The SVG format is easy to learn and you can write your graphics
| manually inside HTML. I've been using it to make 2D objects in
| JavaScript that can be positioned, rotated and scaled using the
| transform style property. You can also animate them with CSS.
| It's a shame there isn't a similar scriptable format for audio,
| something like MIDI. Otherwise you can use a canvas, or even a 3D
| canvas for WebGL.
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| https://gamemaker.io
|
| You will not find better...
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| and with the ability to create a point and click interface with
| something specific happening on each click
|
| Also, as you need: GameMaker Language (GML) is GameMaker's
| scripting language. It is an imperative, dynamically typed
| language commonly likened to JavaScript and C-like languages
| NortySpock wrote:
| It's not a drag and drop environment, but it is JavaScript:
| https://p5js.org/
|
| Basic 60 frames a second canvas and the rest is JavaScript.
|
| Pair that with the excellent Coding Train series
| https://youtube.com/@thecodingtrain
|
| To get around the "serve a webpage locally" problem, you could
| either have Python or Node serve a webpage, or I once rigged up a
| samba share and a small web server on a home server and turned a
| kid loose on it ... It didn't take, I should have spent more time
| helping them daily on it.
|
| But that's an idea.
| miningape wrote:
| Cannot recommend this enough!
| creatonez wrote:
| You might also want to pair it with The Nature of Code:
| https://natureofcode.com/
| acomjean wrote:
| I'll second p5.js and the coding train video series. They are
| quite good, fun and more advanced than than the videos make
| them out to be.
|
| P5 also has an online dev environment which is good enough. If
| you create an account you can save stuff online (make sure to
| backup, another good lesson).
|
| https://editor.p5js.org/
|
| New ones are infrequent but there is a fairly complete set on
| the web.
|
| Ive also started playing with https://phaser.io/. It's more of
| a game framework in JavaScript with built in libraries for
| collision. The getting started tutorial is decent/short and
| gives a good idea of what is going on.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| P5 is definitely what I'd recommend to a lot of people for
| actually starting to learn to code although I think in coding a
| game it might fall down the second you want to do collisions as
| you're going to have to roll all that yourself from scratch.
|
| In 2024 I'd be tempted to say if you want to make games it
| might even be better to just get started with Unity, Unreal or
| Godot and YouTube tutorials + AI help might be enough to smooth
| it out enough.
|
| The absolute basic stuff might be trickier than a system where
| it's quite easy to draw on a screen in a few lines but the
| stuff of collisions and beyond are way easier.
| NortySpock wrote:
| For collisions I can say p5.play has been an excellent plugin
| for p5 to handle inertial physics and collisions.
|
| I would suggest that the novice game developer might enjoy
| rolling their own basic collision detection ( object overlay,
| mouse-over, inertia-ignoring collision resolution, etc), but
| obviously that is not fun or convenient for everyone.
|
| https://p5play.org/learn/ (AGPL licensed with commercial
| exceptions available these days, it seems)
| calflegal wrote:
| Phaser with Claude / LLM to help?
| yarone wrote:
| Roblox studio. My son is a sound designer for some of the top
| games there. He's also learning programming in Lua for Roblox
| platform.
|
| It is a small community of mostly kids aged 15-25 as far as I can
| tell. It doesn't seem like any professional adult game developers
| are part of the community (I got an inside view when I took my
| son to RDC this year).
|
| The top game developers are making millions of dollars per year
| (they're paid in Robux and converted to USD).
|
| In short, thriving ecosystem with lots of kids having fun doing
| creative work including creating games, writing code, designing
| graphics, designing sound effects.
| RIMR wrote:
| Required reading before throwing your child into the machine
| that is Roblox:
| https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/09/the-trouble-wi...
| navane wrote:
| tldr; teenagers on the internet. Nothing here described at
| Roblox doesn't happen to teenagers on the internet as a
| whole; Discord, IM. At least the people learned a valuable
| skill in Roblox.
| mplewis wrote:
| When I was on AIM, I was never pressured into joining an
| asset sweatshop by older kids online. Stay far away from
| Roblox.
| hyperbolablabla wrote:
| Concur with other comments here when I say: do not throw your
| child into this incredibly exploitative community
| grahamj wrote:
| I've read about these concerns but my kid is 11 and on there
| all the time, often with me over her shoulder, and I've never
| seen any sign of it.
|
| It's a huge platform for kids so I'm sure there are some
| creeps but there are plenty of controls in place to deal with
| that and even so, again, I've never seen it.
| maxweylandt wrote:
| There's also the financial exploitation.
| https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=C4prkNgGgK0bR_MX
| _joel wrote:
| I have similar experience to yours. I would prefer them not
| to be on it but it has network effect, as their friends are
| all on it too.
| noblox wrote:
| The creeps are only part of the problem. The platform
| itself is deeply exploitative and harmful. It's full of
| "you can make games and get rich" messaging that's just a
| lie. To say nothing of even if you are successful, they
| will take a staggering cut, and may not pay at all.
|
| Keep your kids as far from Roblox as you can.
| n1b0m wrote:
| Pretty disturbing reading about predatory behaviour on Roblox:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro...
| bloopernova wrote:
| Good god that article shows how immoral roblox's owner is.
| They also seem to be very ignorant about online abuse,
| probably intentionally.
| schazers wrote:
| Download Castle for mobile: https://castle.xyz/
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Don't underestimate kids... just give them proper tools, and they
| will surprise you.
|
| JavaScript is a very forgiving language to learn:
|
| https://playground.babylonjs.com/
|
| Game level designers are also a fun high-abstraction, and won't
| overwhelm the impatient.
|
| https://levelsharesquare.com/games/supermarioconstruct
|
| Have fun =3
| HKH2 wrote:
| JavaScript has me scratching my head when I can't see why
| something won't work and I don't get errors in the console.
| wslh wrote:
| I have good memories of using Alice3D [1] the 3D part is
| appealing.
|
| 11 is young but I don't know how difficult could be to use Unity
| with some help, I know people without any development background
| who created games there in their spare time.
|
| [1] https://www.alice.org/
| samier-trellis wrote:
| Scratch
| MarcScott wrote:
| You should definitely take a look at Struckd Studio which is now
| part of Unity Play - https://play.unity.com/en
|
| It's still a little buggy in places, but nothing that can't be
| overcome.
|
| You can drag and drop in 3D assets and many of them come with
| built in and easily changeable behaviors. Then there is a node
| based programming language that you can use to make alterations.
|
| It's web based, but also has iOS and Android apps available for
| editing and playing the games.
|
| edit - I'm an educator working in the CS ecosystem, and am
| playing with Struckd with the intention of making a suite of
| learning resources.
| Svenskunganka wrote:
| I started with the World Editor from Warcraft 3 around that age,
| creating custom maps, gamemodes and spells/abilities. It has
| scripting capabilities that is somewhere between GUI code and
| actual code. There's also a lovely community around the World
| Editor over on https://hiveworkshop.com. Picking the latest
| custom spell updated as a showcase, if you expand the "Spoiler:
| Triggers" you can see how the "code" looks like:
| https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/frost-field-v1-0-1.3556...
|
| There are a lot of custom maps in that game that has later become
| their own standalone games, the most well-known is probably Dota
| 2 that is the successor to the DotA custom map in Warcraft 3. I
| hear the Warcraft 3: Reforged update brough Lua support, but the
| "old" way of using the GUI or JASS is still supported so there is
| a natural learning path from the simpler GUI code to more
| advanced JASS or Lua code.
| mxyzptlk wrote:
| I came here to recommend Warcraft 3 also. It's how my son
| started on the path to coding. Being able to add to an existing
| platform gave his early efforts some polish that encouraged him
| to continue.
| shultays wrote:
| Agreed, hook your kid to wc3 and its custom maps first and
| scripting new maps will come neutrally. At least it happened to
| me back when I was a kid
| daitangio wrote:
| Try TIC80 https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80
|
| Very mice, multi programming language support
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I bought an external keyboard for my phone so that when I'm
| outside somewhere and bored out of my mind I can code on
| something in TIC-80
| petee wrote:
| TIC80 is great, and I like that it drops some of the arbitrary
| restrictions that Pico has. And there are some pretty
| impressive demos including 3d rendering.
|
| Also super easy to deploy your game with builtin emscripten
| generation
| atilimcetin wrote:
| There are lots of good suggestions here. My first preference
| would be pico-8 (already mentioned).
|
| But also I can also suggest another interesting option: GB Studio
| - https://www.gbstudio.dev It's a quick and easy to use drag and
| drop retro game creator for game boy. It also supports visual
| scripting.
| nmrtn wrote:
| Have you tried iterating your code and gameplay with
| https:://cursor.com like in this video :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5uvDZ8srHA ? Total blast.
| Peacefulz wrote:
| This video blew me away. I take back all of my reservations
| involving pairing AI with learning and development. I hope that
| little girl sticks to creating stuff!
| nodja wrote:
| Gamemaker if you want no code. It's free if you're not planning
| to release games commercially. You can add code later if you want
| custom behaviors that gamemaker doesn't include out of the box.
| 2D only.
|
| Godot if you want coding. Coding is required but it uses gdscript
| which is a python inspired language. The editor is also batteries
| included, so godot.exe will include everything you need to make a
| game (aside from assets, but even there some plugins can help).
| 2D and 3D, but 3D is not "AAA" tier.
|
| I honestly recommend you go for godot. There are tons of
| tutorials out there to create all kinds of games, specially if
| it's something basic. It's what I wish existed when I was 11 and
| had tons of time to mess around.
|
| I'd say look up a quickstart tutorial for both and check if your
| kid likes any of them.
|
| I see lots of recommendations for niche/toy engines. I don't
| recommend those because it'll be hard to look up tutorials for
| them. Having guidance in essential. I also don't recommend your
| kid get to roblox, sure he might be able to make some money or
| get lots of attention, but having external motivators can be very
| detrimental.
| lvturner wrote:
| GameMaker is generally excellent and decades worth of material,
| it's original design was to teach students (disclaimer, used to
| work for YoYoGames a long time ago) not sure where it sits
| these days, but suspect it's only gotten easier to work with.
|
| I _just_ started tinkering with Godot, seems very, very good
| and the licensing means you won 't suddenly have the rug pulled
| out from under you.
|
| I'm torn though, the recommendation for things like Roblox seem
| valid, but indeed it seems like the kind of thing where you
| will hit a glass ceiling. On the flip side getting started on
| something more generic may be tedious and cause an 11 year old
| to lose interest quickly.
|
| I think it comes down to the motivations and nature of the
| individual - do they wanna learn the skill, or do they want to
| create something quick that they can show off to their friends?
| (and maybe go further if they really enjoy it)
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| I'll give a +1 to Godot; my son and I had fun going through
| the 2-D game tutorial and customizing the game. We added some
| physics, and it was quickly hilarious.
|
| Simpler game systems weren't flexible enough to capture his
| imagination. We also tried to get started with Unity, but we
| couldn't get past the first steps.
| fr2null wrote:
| I enjoyed gamemaker a lot. Especially the ease of adding small
| snippets of code when you wanted to do something slightly more
| advanced than the normal editor allowed.
| cweagans wrote:
| Humble Bundle has a Godot bundle is available for the next day or
| so. That might be a good one to look at if you're ok with leaning
| into code a bit (gdscript is very very similar to python).
| https://www.humblebundle.com/software/learn-godot-43-complet...
|
| Also check out the RPG Maker bundle. That's pretty point-and-
| click. You can have something basic up and running in a couple
| minutes (literally just paint your tiles onto a map and click Go
| and you'll have a little jrpg). If you use the newest version,
| you can script it in Javascript. One major selling point here is
| that their "runtime package" (RTP) comes with a TON of game
| assets to use, so you don't have to track down/make art if you
| don't want to (you _can_ , but I often get blocked on art when
| I'm playing with game dev).
| https://www.humblebundle.com/software/gotcha-gotcha-presents...
|
| GBStudio is another good (free) one to look at. It's point and
| click for the most part and if you get a flash cart, you can play
| your game on a real Gameboy. Definitely not gonna be the most
| flashy, but it's a good exercise in making something fun with
| limited resources available. https://www.gbstudio.dev
|
| GDevelop is another no-/low-code option: https://gdevelop.io
|
| Defold is another scripting-heavy option (Lua):
| https://defold.com
| davidsojevic wrote:
| Modd.io [0] is a great platform that's relatively easy to get
| into and start making games. I suspect it would be a fairly good
| entry point for kids and it has the added benefit that your child
| can share the games they're making with their friends to play
| together live.
|
| They have fairly good documentation [1] and if videos are more
| your child's thing, the founder/developer is incredibly active on
| YouTube and posts videos [2] and live streams fairly regularly.
|
| They also have templates for a good number of different game
| types/modes that you can start off with, eg. platformer, tower
| defense, car racing, MMORPG, etc.
|
| [0] https://www.modd.io/
|
| [1] https://learn.modd.io/
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/@baldgamedev/videos
| asicsp wrote:
| https://microstudio.dev/ - supports JavaScript and Python
| max_ wrote:
| Raylib is really good
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I don't think it has been mentioned here, but dot big bang is
| pretty cool and suitable for young game dev-curious kids.
|
| It has a fairly easy learning experience if you want to do very
| basic things, but opens up into an impressively capable editor if
| you want it to.
|
| I worked on it for a year and the team behind it is awesome.
| Great people who are passionate about what they're doing, care a
| lot about the kids using the platform (making it kid-friendly
| matters a huge amount), and put a lot of effort into making it
| genuinely fun first (rather than chasing trends for example).
|
| Not sure how it compares to other options but it's worth checking
| it out. I often wish I still worked on it.
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| Love2d.
| widdershins wrote:
| Agreed. OP said they don't know Lua, but if you know Javascript
| it can be picked up in a day or two. And it's really a lovely
| experience.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Not sure if this meets your specifications, since it's code
| first, but Processing (in it's JavaScript incarnation, p5.js[1])
| might be worth looking at.
|
| In terms of games that include content creation tools within
| them, I've been impressed with Fortnite and Rocket League. Using
| the in-game editor may be a good gateway to building mods
| offline.
|
| 1 - Examples https://p5js.org/examples/ and on online code editor
| https://editor.p5js.org/.
| huydotnet wrote:
| My kiddo want to make game on Nintendo Switch, which is almost
| impossible at this time, but I recently found Fuze 4
| (https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/fuze4-nintendo-sw...)
| that allows him to do exactly that. Quite happy with Fuze's
| workflow. We can even connect an external keyboard so he can type
| on it.
| greeniskool wrote:
| SmileBASIC is another coding environment on Switch. The DSi and
| 3DS versions were quite popular, I'm surprised the Switch
| version didn't catch on as much as they did
| t-writescode wrote:
| I would encourage a bunch of different games where making a game
| is a game mechanic, so this includes: * Little
| Big Planet * RPG Maker (from the PS1 days ... I don't know
| what the new ones are like) * Super Mario Maker *
| Roblox (other comments are saying this is bad? I don't know much,
| but it was my first thought) * Dreams for the PS4
|
| The person that made Lethal Company was originally a Roblox dev,
| so I know that route can work; and LBP and SMM are both _great_
| ways for learning how to create engaging and difficult levels.
| Some of them even have state management.
|
| I played RPG Maker a million years ago and liked it, so I imagine
| that game or its family is still a nice experience.
|
| I haven't played Dreams, but I've heard it's a strong,
| interactive environment?
| greeniskool wrote:
| All versions of RPG Maker frequently go on sale on Steam, the
| older ones you can get for pennies. XP, VX and VX Ace support
| Ruby as a scripting language, meanwhile MV and MZ supports web
| export and JS scripting. Can't recommend these programs enough.
| a-saleh wrote:
| I think Roblox can be bad in a "badly moderated online space"
| and "potentially abusive monetization/exploitative sharing
| structure" - the game itself feels good?
| lazycog512 wrote:
| this.
|
| the tradeoff is with something like godot you only have
| examples/tutorials and hardly ever something "finished" or
| "very fun" or "thing people are playing".
|
| something like roblox or another modding-focused game allows
| you to see what other people did as inspiration or to show
| what other people are actually interested in, as opposed to
| just making things for yourself.
| eb0la wrote:
| That's funny, I taught a bit if Basic to my son coding rock,
| paper, scissor, too.
| hiimshort wrote:
| A friend of mine works on DotBigBang which is pretty
| approachable. May be worth giving it a try!
|
| https://dotbigbang.com/
| hot_gril wrote:
| Minecraft can do stuff with command blocks
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Construct 3 is awesome.
| rsavage wrote:
| You can try https://make.gamefroot.com/ it's specifically
| designed for kids aged 6 to 14.
|
| It's used by a bunch of primary schools to teach kids programming
| via games.
|
| It's drag and drop interface where I believe you can drop into
| JavaScript as well.
|
| Haven't used it myself but met the founders at a game conference.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| When I was only slightly older, I was part of an RPG maker
| community. Skills I acquired there regarding image
| editing/manipulation, writing reviews, looking out for things
| that seem unnaturally regular, social communication, and whatnot
| still serve me today. It was a very creative place to be. There
| was a screenshot thread in the forum and almost every day I would
| check it out for new posts, reading people's reviews and write
| some myself. I remember spending hours and hours making a faceset
| too. Trying to fit those emotions onto the 48x48 pixels.
|
| I would recommend such a community, but I am only aware of one
| bigger community like that surviving (multimediaxis forum[1],
| which could be great) and my old community does no longer exist,
| which saddens me to this day.
|
| [1]: https://www.multimediaxis.de/forum.php
| masfoobar wrote:
| Back in my day (was teenager in mid-to-late 90s) I had to figure
| out how games worked. Thankfully, we had games like Quake which
| can be modded and had various level editors. Worldcraft, which is
| now called Hammer, was awesome.
|
| It is this journey that helped me become a programmer today.
| While not a games programmer, I do make games in my spare time.
|
| Now -- sure.. why mention this? I believe I understand a 11 year-
| olds mindset that wants to do more than play games - but
| understand how they work. I also have children of my own and
| waiting for them to hint they want to learn. Of course the 90s
| way is a distant memory. There is more access to things in the
| gaming world... but more options can also be a little
| intimidating as well.
|
| 11 can still be "young" depending on their skill level with
| computers. For now, you could start off with the basics. For
| world building/construction, we do have Minecraft (which my 6
| year old son plays). We also have things like Roblox (which my 12
| year old daughter plays)
|
| We also have Scratch, a "Visual Programming Language" - my
| daughter has been using this at school and some afternoon/evening
| clubs at the library.
|
| For me personally, I think 13 (years old) is going to be 'that
| age' when they start going into more detail with making games.
| Maybe your child is ready sooner. Only you know.
|
| If they are ready to progress further than the above, I would
| recommend something like Godot, Unity or Unreal. Whichever I pick
| is a decision I make at that time... but if I had to choose now,
| I might try Godot first and go from there.
|
| Yes.. I might make decisions for the child to start with. I would
| sit with my child and learn together. Once they start doing
| things on their own I would take a step back and let them play.
| They will soon ask for help if they want it.
|
| For example, when I was playing with Worldcraft, I was trying to
| figure out how to move an object around but I just didn't
| understand how I used the "target" and "targetname" fields. I
| asked for my Step-Dad to help and he figured it out for me. Once
| I understood it, and got an object moving in the game, I was able
| to carry on from there. He gave me space to learn.
|
| The great thing about Unity, Unreal or Godot - is these are used
| for REAL GAMES... so your child can stay on these and, perhaps,
| have a career using them. They can figure out if they want to be
| an artist, level designer, 3d modeler, or programmer, etc. Their
| interest and decision can also point them to Blender,
| GIMP/Photoshop, or to write their own games engine (or simply a
| game) using a programming language.
|
| For me -- I went with the DIY approach as a programmer, writing
| games in C (but moving to Odin) and I use OpenGL, SDL2, etc. Once
| you get a window open you can start by making Pong, or a Card
| Game, etc. So, if any of my children want to learn... learning
| Godot is just as much an experience for me as well -- but it is
| also to give them space to learn their way and, like my Step-Dad
| did for me, to help me when I needed it.
|
| "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk
| through it" - Morpheus
|
| --- All software I mentioned above listed here. I hope this
| helps. My advice is to go with the flow and make your own
| learning fun.
|
| - Quake C / Modding / Worldcraft. -- For Quake (old school.
| Likely avoid for younger gen)
|
| - Hammer Editor for Source/Source 2 -- More modern
|
| - Scratch -- popular visual programming language for kids.. even
| young!
|
| - Minecraft, Roblox -- Popular world building, fun games
|
| - Photoshop, Gimp -- Popular Paint or Photo editing
|
| - Blender -- Popular 3D modelling (architecture, 3d animation,
| etc)
|
| - Unity, Unreal, Godot -- popular game engines / editing tools
|
| - Programming language C, Odin... libraries like SDL (making
| games manually)
| davea37 wrote:
| https://downpour.games
| kanwisher wrote:
| Roblox Creator studio, its amazing, tons of tutorials and its
| super easy to publish something
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| Yeah it actually is. My 7 and 4 year old have been playing some
| crappy games on Roblox which led us to spending some time in
| the Creator Studio. I was surprised how good it was given given
| the vast amounts of absolute crap in Roblox, although I guess
| that is why there is vast amounts of crap :D
| nurettin wrote:
| https://www.renpy.org/
|
| This does pretty much what you have described. It supports
| scenes, image maps for point and click, dialogues and is low
| code.
| archargelod wrote:
| Try Enu
|
| https://getenu.com/
|
| Enu is a 3d live coding playground where you can control objects
| with code. Similar to LOGO but in 3d. It uses Nim - language very
| similar to Python and easy to pick up.
|
| Duscussed previously on HN:
|
| 17 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36966116
|
| 6 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38520901
|
| Nim forum post with announcement of Enu 0.2 and some useful
| links: https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/10700
| doomlaser wrote:
| My suggestion, as a game developer for nearly 30 years: pico-8.
| If you have any questions. Ping me on Twitter. It's the weekend
| after all ;)
| Curzel wrote:
| 100% GameMaker https://gamemaker.io/en
| maxdamantus wrote:
| I can't speak for the current version of GameMaker, but the
| versions from around 2002 ("by Mark Overmars", when I was 9 or
| 10) were definitely a significant part of my development as a
| programmer, so I'm happy to see this recommended.
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| This is a surprisingly crowded space. Aside from the big names
| like Scratch, Blockly, Roblox and (to an extent) Minecraft
| Education. There are heaps of projects out there created by
| educators who wanted to improve their own course. One particular
| example I was quite impressed with was Blockly -> Unity:
|
| https://app.code-it-studio.de/course/step/4/44
|
| I've worked in this space a lot: professional game development,
| led EdTech engineering departments, and worked as CTO of a
| company building a UGC interactive fiction platform. I've a six
| year old daughter who is really interested in creating -- art,
| media, games, whatever. My personal opinion is that a lot of
| these platforms make a critical mistake. They all neglect that
| game design is hard!
|
| Look at all the games that flop on Steam each year. These are
| made by professionals. It's disheartening for kids when the thing
| they've worked hard on simply isn't fun -- particularly when they
| share it with friends and are met with, at best, a shrug.
|
| Kids are going to be different, so it's still worth trying all
| the stuff that's already out there. However, I'm currently
| working on something in this space that's a bit different.
| Basically, removing the complexity of game design from the
| equation, but still allowing creativity, the ability to program
| functionality, build new mechanics and the ability for kids to
| share their work.
|
| Of course, it's an interesting one, because kids most certainly
| say they "want to build games". It's just that kids, young kids
| in particular, don't understand what is actually involved in
| building the games that they love to play. The goal of what I'm
| building is very much to guide kids to graduate beyond the
| platform and ideally set kids up to make games from scratch --
| it's just not a good place to start.
| mc3301 wrote:
| Whatever you are currently working on sounds so interesting!
| mysterydip wrote:
| > It's disheartening for kids when the thing they've worked
| hard on simply isn't fun -- particularly when they share it
| with friends and are met with, at best, a shrug.
|
| One of the best books I've read on this was "Board Game Design
| Advice: From the Best in the World" by Gabe Barrett of
| https://boardgamedesignlab.com/ (which is a great designer
| resource on its own). There's an audio version as well. What's
| good about the book is it's advice from pro (some very
| successful) game designers on how they handle failure and ideas
| that don't work. Until that point, I felt alone in my failures
| and discouragement. It really helped to hear it's a struggle
| for everyone.
| eterpstra wrote:
| > > It's disheartening for kids when the thing they've worked
| hard on simply isn't fun -- particularly when they share it
| with friends and are met with, at best, a shrug.
|
| An easy way around this is to have kids include their friends
| as characters. Even if it's just a name and reasonable
| facsimile. And add some silly humor.
|
| Yet another run and jump platformer game with a made-up
| character is going to be boring. A platformer where Billy from
| down the street farts jelly beans every time he jumps will
| probably get a few playthoughs and shares.
| empressplay wrote:
| That's why ideally game making is a collaborative activity --
| if they make something with at least one other person, there's
| at least some communal appreciation for the effort.
| jhbadger wrote:
| >Look at all the games that flop on Steam each year. These are
| made by professionals. It's disheartening for kids when the
| thing they've worked hard on simply isn't fun -- particularly
| when they share it with friends and are met with, at best, a
| shrug.
|
| Why should this be a concern? Should people not paint for fun
| if their pictures aren't museum-worthy? Should they not play
| basketball just because they aren't NBA material? The point of
| doing something yourself is to do it, not to compete with
| professionals.
| wadadadad wrote:
| If the child is creating games because the act of creating
| games is fun, it's fine- great even! Same thing for painting,
| or playing basketball, etc.
|
| The point I think GP was trying to make is, if the child is
| creating games because they want to share the games and they
| think other people will enjoy the games they created- that's
| where the problem is. GP is saying that kids can get
| disheartened because their expectation was others will enjoy
| their game, when potentially (very likely), others won't
| enjoy their game, because game design is hard. Adults may be
| more able to handle this emotionally and 'push through it',
| but children could potentially take this poorly and not want
| to continue game development because of the negative
| reactions of others.
|
| We should absolutely continue to encourage game design (or
| really anything a child is interested in); I would say
| generally we should be aware of this potential concern for
| anyone developing games.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| of course it's a concern because kids don't know that there's
| going to be a big gap between what they create and what they
| envision so it's disheartening for them
| WillAdams wrote:
| Do you have a Nintendo Switch?
|
| I bought:
|
| https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/game-builder-gara...
|
| and gave it to a co-worker's kid who enjoyed it quite a bit and
| said:
|
| >This is the greatest game ever!
| archargelod wrote:
| I could also recommend Fuze4 and SmileBASIC for Nintendo
| Switch.
|
| They're a lot more advanced, essentially each has it's own
| scripting language + code editor + a lot of quality assets.
|
| I know the reputation of Basic, but SmileBASIC is using more
| modern iteration of the language, it's not your BASIC from
| commodore or dos. I also find their documentation and overall
| number of available functions exceptional.
|
| Fuze4 has a nice community, they also have a youtube channel
| with tutorials and competitions.
|
| They all have a special place in my heart, because these 3 apps
| is how I started my programming hobby, before moving to Lua
| and, recently, to Nim.
| AlexITC wrote:
| I'd encourage you to give playcodeai.com a try, I built this for
| my kid on a similar's age.
|
| I wrote quite a lot about my motivations a couple of days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41619733
|
| I took the freedom to email you an api key to give it a try.
|
| Good luck.
| jvvw wrote:
| I've done lot of volunteering programming with children and also
| have an 11 year old. Three obvious options: Unity, Scratch and
| Python with PyGame.
|
| Unity sounds like the best fit to me - some code but a lot of
| interface. Code Club has a series of Unity projects which form a
| good getting started series:
| https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/collections/unity As a Python
| programmer myself I found it fine helping my other son with
| those.
|
| My 11 year old makes lots of stuff on Scratch by himself and has
| lots of fun. Scratch has pretty much become the default coding
| platforms for that under-12 age group. There are lots of
| resources and it's very easy to get making games, but it's
| limited in various ways and I have reservations about how great
| an introduction it is to programming beyond the real basics like
| variables and loops. If your child was seven or eight I would
| recommend Scratch, but feel like an 11 year old would probably be
| better off starting with something else.
|
| Python is another option because you can help there and PyGame is
| the obvious library to use. It's quite a bit of work for somebody
| new to Python to make anything that feels like a game, although
| not impossible (I've been making a flag guessing game with my 11
| year old in Python but using Tkinter instead) so more delayed
| gratification is definitely needed. You'd probably have to help a
| lot and there are a lot of concepts to learn - just becoming
| confident in how things like lists, dictionaries and objects work
| takes some time at that age. There are some books that lead you
| through making games with Python and PyGame though - Mission
| Python and Python Hunting spring to mind, with the caveat that I
| haven't worked through all of either of them. I think most 11
| year olds would struggle to work through those books by
| themselves though, but if you skim through them and use them as a
| road map for making a game together, then they could be worth a
| go.
| andrewchilds wrote:
| My 9 y.o. has gotten a lot out of two platform game makers:
| Bloxels (https://www.bloxels.com), and the Jerry Lawson Google
| Doodle (https://doodles.google/doodle/gerald-jerry-lawsons-82nd-
| birt...). They're both limited but a nice introduction to the
| creative elements of game design.
| xlaacid wrote:
| The fundamental mistake most people make with introducing kids to
| game making is making them code first. This, and other companies,
| have a good staring point of using hands on things to understand
| the fundamentals of game design and then go to code.
| https://www.buildgamebox.com/
| donatj wrote:
| I don't know how a modern kid would feel about the TUI, but I
| made a TON of games in QBasic as a kid.
|
| QB64 is a pretty good modern version thereof.
| HKH2 wrote:
| I wish I had had SDL2 as a kid.
| mentos wrote:
| Modding/coding for my favorite game (Ultima Online) is what got
| me into C# at 13 (for the RunUO emulator).
|
| If any of their favorite games let you mod or script maybe check
| that out.
|
| Nothing cooler than connecting the dots that I could affect how
| the game I loved behaved.
| trod123 wrote:
| Igor, This is a subject area that seems like it would be a good
| starter learning project and doable but really its not.
|
| There are many problems that just are not suited to a young
| person at that age level of comprehension. Gaming graphics for
| example often requires understanding quaternion math, computer
| science, and hardware at a very low level (realtime processing
| where ms framerate processing counts).
|
| Game design often also is multidisciplinary and requires
| knowledge of psychology, storytelling, music, and art.
|
| Kids simply don't have the life experience, to put something
| together for this and have it turn out in a satisfying completed
| project.
|
| Additionally, even when you are an expert, the experts don't play
| their own games most times. The vast majority of the fun and
| allure comes from the discovery of not knowing everything about
| the game and discovering it. This is why writing games for
| yourself is often doomed to failure.
|
| Additionally, most games today have subtle manipulations and
| embedded addiction triggers. These aren't things they can just
| pick up and use. As an example of this, Call of Duty and
| Battlefield (FPS), have headshot audio triggers that associate
| through pavlovian conditioning headshots ingame with the dopamine
| hit sound cha-ching.
|
| The ability to control addiction is in a part of the brain that
| doesn't usually develop fully until your 20s, and this stuff is
| in most modern games. There is a framework called the Octalysis
| Framework, it provides common methods to embed dark patterns in a
| way people don't perceive. It is based on some earlier work based
| in thought reform (torture), and later psychology experiments
| identifying key drivers to enable manipulation. This is extremely
| subtle stuff similar to what Pixar & Disney do in their movies
| (i.e. the handsome guy is always the villain, the preacher is
| always crazy...lot more).
|
| Robert Cialdini wrote a book covering some of this precursor
| material. The book is called Influence, and it lays out all our
| natural perceptual blindspots, and how to exploit them. These are
| blindspots not even grown adults will notice most of the time
| without training.
|
| I think you will be better served by starting them on something
| educationally constructive that is more suited for their age. If
| you are looking for something math related, Cosmic Calculator
| series has shortcuts that let you do math amazingly fast.
| Storytelling for writing authors may be good as well, or just
| focus on getting them to read for pleasure.
|
| Descartes Rules of Method were particularly useful around that
| age as well as logic and reasoning (which public education will
| not teach them), since they are only just starting to be able to
| discern lies from truths, and that is a major developmental
| milestone.
|
| Other activities might include Piano lessons, or art lessons.
|
| The current gaming landscape is unhealthy, and can't be vetted by
| an 11-yo and even platforms designed to make this no-code easier,
| you have to worry about them suggesting and influencing in ways
| that will diminish them, or mislead, or creating interference and
| frustration, or something more directly harmful like TikTok and
| their recommendations to the Blackout Challenge (kids have
| literally died).
|
| Some who don't have children might think this is overblown but
| there are no trusted platforms out there that will safeguard kids
| appropriately.
|
| Google "Roblox kids scandal" and you'll see what I mean; and
| they've been recommended here in more than a few other comments.
|
| Update: Sometimes I find it really surprising where others
| priorities are here on HN. You'd think protecting children would
| be paramount, but voting paints a very different picture, -3 for
| mentioning tiktok or the roblox scandal...
| ripper1138 wrote:
| If you think Roblox is an unsafe platform, you should see the
| rest of the internet.
| skeaker wrote:
| I suspect the voting is more based on the fact that you're
| essentially saying "your child should give up, this field is
| bad and there are no good spaces for kids" when that's both
| terrible advice and not at all true. Yes, there are
| exploitative spaces, but there are in fact good spaces too. And
| your whole thing about how "making games is less fun than
| playing them and playing them is actually a dark pattern that
| is evil" is extremely cynical and doesn't hold well if you know
| about more games than mobile ones or CoD.
|
| If the post was about a kid wanting to write novels and you had
| said "writing is not as fun as reading, and you shouldn't read
| anyways because most books are scammy self-help books and
| conspiracy theories that exploit your brain," I think you would
| be similarly downvoted. Nothing to do with a Roblox scandal in
| that case either.
| throw0101d wrote:
| Squeak/Smalltalk, especially an environment like Scratch:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)
|
| * https://scratch.mit.edu
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak
| codingbot3000 wrote:
| +1 to that
|
| Both my kids did try out Scratch, and would create a lot of
| funny things with it on rainy days. It is well thought through
| and easy to learn.
| grugagag wrote:
| Try Pico-8. Lots of source code available on internet archive.
| Alternatively Tic-80 is also a good platform.
| MaxGripe wrote:
| Ain't that for 8-yo
| grugagag wrote:
| How about 11 year old?
| bentt wrote:
| Been a pro gamedev for 20+ years.
|
| You have a born game designer on your hands. It is important to
| not assume this means they are super interested in programming.
| They may be, but game design is its own thing. HN will skew you
| towards programming first, naturally.
|
| Check these out:
|
| - Adventure Game Studio (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/)
|
| - Twine (https://twinery.org/)
|
| And these have more visual ways of programming which could let
| them express their ideas with less friction
|
| - Dreams (Playstation)
|
| - Unity (with Playmaker or Bolt visual scripting)
|
| - Godot
|
| And the other suggestions of Scratch are good, but I find Scratch
| to feel like a way to learn programming more than expressing game
| design.
|
| Lastly, explore card and tabletop games with them. It's a whole
| thing!
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| this is great advice. let them focus on designing gameplay
| right now. once they've designed a core game loop and they're
| proud of it, maybe they'll want to learn how to implement it in
| software, or maybe they'll want to make some sort of physical
| product (game book, card deck, miniatures, etc.), or maybe
| they'll want to move on and design a whole new game.
|
| tabletop simulator (on steam) is an easy platform for designing
| tabletop games. it has lots of built-in assets, you can import
| your assets, it has lots of built-in concepts that are common
| to games (zones/hands/inventories/meeples/etc). rules-
| enforcement is mostly done by the players (multiplayer is
| supported) just like when playing games in real life, so it's
| great for prototyping and playtesting without coding up formal
| logic.
| bentt wrote:
| oh yeah, tabletop simulator is a great idea. You want to find
| ways to let them manipulate existing assets easily and that's
| perfect.
| clbrook wrote:
| Another option for tabletop games is printing with The Game
| Crafter: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree with this other advice. Do "tabletop" first. It doesn't
| have to be fancy, even just notecards or paper. You can iterate
| _very quickly_ on the core game loop and "finding the fun". If
| you do want something fancier than just paper and words, a
| great option is printing on full page sticker paper and then
| attach that to chipboard (you can get it cheap online) and then
| just cut it out. You have a game that feels a lot more real
| than just notecards. There are lots of online resources for
| fast prototyping of card and board games. There are lots of
| Discords around game design and a lot of game conventions have
| a "prototype" area where designers showcase their games to get
| feedback and improve them. There are podcasts like Ludology and
| Building the Game to help give more theory of game design
| dicussions. (If you are US based, look up Unpub, Protospiel,
| etc...)
|
| (I design card and board games as a hobby, the industry is very
| friendly and loves to mentor!)
| ido wrote:
| GameMaker is also a good option, it even has a scratch-like
| visual programming language (but also a more conventional text
| based language).
| Difwif wrote:
| Game Maker is what started it all for me over 20 years ago.
| Once I picked up the scripting language Python and Lua
| quickly followed. I think I owe my entire career in software
| to this program.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| Plus, if you are looking to teach a child interested in
| programming specifically, you might consider Snap/Build Your
| Own Blocks [0], an extension of Scratch made partially by an
| instructor of SICP at Berkeley to support things like anonymous
| functions, prototypes, and metaprogramming. It seems robust
| enough a child given it now could get right up to undergraduate
| introductory CS as the genuine article! I would have been
| amazed if any of the systems to enable kids to make games of my
| childhood (which I did get a pretty unrepresentatively bad
| batch of besides) had that kind of potential to them. Imagine a
| high schooler today reading, say, a blog post about their
| favorite game's scripting system for its quest designers and
| implementing its high level beat for beat themselves. Sure
| it'll run disappointingly slow but the education potential is
| immense.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Seconding the Dreams recommendation. It's _incredible_.
| amjoshuamichael wrote:
| I don't think Dreams gets enough credit because it came out
| at the end of the PlayStation 4's life and it didn't get a
| lot of marketing, but it absolutely is fantastic. I'd say
| it's the best implementation of visual scripting I've ever
| seen, and that's using a traditional game controller (or two
| PSMove controllers) instead of a mouse/keyboard. That's not
| even including the modeling tools or music tools.
|
| As someone who makes games, I often hear people ask me "how
| do I get started?" And my first answer is always "learn C."
| When they look at me funny, I say, "Try Dreams on
| Playstation."
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Apparently they were working on a PC port but it was
| abandoned after declining sales. I really really hope
| someone buys the IP and finishes the port, because it would
| be a massive success.
| nailuj wrote:
| One more suggestion are games that have powerful editors or
| modding tools. Starcraft, Age of Empires, Skyrim, Minecraft
| bentt wrote:
| Yes, modding is a great suggestion. So many talented working
| game developers started with mods.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Inkle as well, it's got an easy online editor and lets you do
| basically choose your own adventures, kindof like a linear
| zork/infocom story engine (stories can branch, but usually move
| forward).
|
| Old school was ZZT
| (https://museumofzzt.com/file/browse/detail/featured-
| world/?s...) and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set
|
| ...ZZT especially is interestingly retro with the pixel-art
| style, and IIRC, quite a decent programming / dialogue
| capabilities.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Toddlers make up fun games all the time. Isn't programming the
| point? Where's Roblox? Is there a single Twine game that an 11
| year old has played?
| bentt wrote:
| The tools in Roblox are not that simple and are pretty geared
| towards technical people. They're cool! But in this case I
| think there are better ways to start.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| you mention your child is making games with powerpoint. a lot of
| suggestions are for platforms that let your child dip their toes
| in coding. i'd like to go another direction: consider "tabletop
| simulator", a virtual board/card game platform.
|
| in TTS, you can import assets easily (as cards or tokens or
| boards) and move them around in game with no effort. this is
| enough to play the game, but TTS won't enforce any rules. adding
| rules enforcement will require coding.
|
| TTS will basically be powerpoint on steroids for your young game
| designer, allowing quick iteration and more interactive
| expression options without getting bogged down in encoding the
| logic of it all. it's less of an engineering gateway and more of
| a game design gateway.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I suggest Unreal Engine, 11 years is old enough to follow
| tutorials on YouTube. I think I was at around this age when I
| played with Game Maker on Commodore 64.
|
| There's not much coding required in UE, but there's some learning
| curve that's for sure. Having an instant feedback however is
| really good for learning.
|
| I would also suggest https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/ which is a good
| for 2D RPG games, there are quite a few variants of they they
| released.
| Arelius wrote:
| There is something really powerful about using the same tools
| professional developers are using, as an 11 year old.
|
| FWIW, I started modding UE1 games at about 12. Starting from
| something was nice, but it was otherwise accessible enough. And
| BP just makes it more so.
| pid-1 wrote:
| RPG Maker brings me so many good memories... highly recommend!
| teamonkey wrote:
| I've used Unreal Engine professionally for about 7 years and I
| would NOT recommend it to an 11-year-old, for much the same
| reason you don't first teach people to fly in an Airbus A380.
|
| I WOULD, however, recommend _Unreal Engine for Fortnite_
| (UEFN), which is stripped down and focused while still being
| powerful.
| stuporglue wrote:
| My daughter is 11 and has been making simple games on Scratch.
|
| There's a lot of assets (images, characters, backgrounds) already
| in the system. The sending signals and receiving signals wasn't
| intuitive for her at first, but now she's getting it pretty well.
|
| I don't think she could/would have figured it out on her own yet.
| Her older sister is 14 and spent a lot of time learning Scratch
| last year, so she was able to help her over the hurdles (like
| signaling). The 14 year old was able to learn it on her own,
| though I did teach her some concepts like loops and variables at
| the very start.
| joelanman wrote:
| on a slightly different tack - games that are programming-like:
|
| - Minecraft - Human Resource Machine - The Sequence (Android) -
| Any complex management game
| lefstathiou wrote:
| When I was a kid, I loved RPG maker. I'm sure there are legacy
| versions out there.
| fergie wrote:
| Lots of good suggestions here, but I feel that on the rare
| occasions when you see 11-year olds actually making games, they
| are generally in Minecraft or Roblox.
| jot wrote:
| DragonRuby https://dragonruby.org/
|
| I had so much fun with this with my 7 year old. Was super easy to
| take their art and make games with it. You can start by editing
| one of the many example games it comes with.
| shortercode wrote:
| I used to work on the Construct 3 game engine. It's great for
| doing small games. You can do a lot by just dropping images in
| and adding "behaviours" like "platformer movement" and "solid".
| Which is enough to build a simple platform game without any
| coding.
|
| It scales pretty well from that, allowing you to build logic
| trees in a scratch like environment or go full code with JS.
|
| Trial version is free, and browser based so no install. Loads of
| examples and demos in the editor to try as well.
| wormlord wrote:
| Construct 3 is great. I used to it to teach at a camp. I would
| recommend this over everything else in this thread. It has a
| low barrier to entry, with the option to learn JS a bit at a
| time as the kid's skills grow.
| kragen wrote:
| godot is best: instant feedback, quick to get started with, no
| glass ceiling, free software to prevent unity-style rugpulls.
| take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjX5llYZ5eQ to see
| what it's like in 6 minutes (from 4 years ago so kind of
| obsolete) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhfqjmasi0 to see a
| complete, high-quality tutorial walking you through building a
| 2-d platformer
|
| it doesn't use python anymore, although gdscript is very similar
| to python. but you can get pretty far into building godot games
| with only a few lines of code
| weinzierl wrote:
| Godot, hands down. I used it with my then 12 year old to recreate
| a game that she used to play with her friends. I was pretty
| smooth sailing and the result was better than we expected, so we
| plan to release it in the winter.
|
| We don't expect a lot of downloads or to make any money from it
| and that is not the point. The goal was to produce a minimal game
| _completely_ DIY and from scratch. For the first version we
| created everything ourselves, including the assets. For the
| version we plan to release we will have a couple of select bought
| assets, but it was a good path to start with our own creations.
|
| A not to be underestimated bonus is that GDScript is similar
| enough to Python that in my opinion learning it is useful beyond
| Godot and game development.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think it's very smart of you to only start with a simple game
| builder and not assume this means your child is "born to be a
| game designer" or interested in programming. Most kids like video
| games and I imagine video game designer tops the list of jobs
| kids want to have when they grow up, right next to YouTuber.
|
| The question is whether that interest is actually a lifelong one.
| In my case, I applied to some degree programs for video game
| design, but ended up going to something else entirely. This
| turned out to be a very good thing, as I slowly lost interest in
| gaming over the next decade, as is natural for a lot of people, I
| think. Nowadays I still enjoy the occasional game, but would
| never consider making it my career. Had I assumed that my teenage
| interest in gaming was a deeper lifelong one, I think I'd have
| made some poor decisions in terms of education, jobs, etc.
| gcr wrote:
| Here's an unconventional choice: grab a copy of the old RPG Maker
| XP and let them at it. Most of the difficulty is selecting and
| arranging art assets.
|
| There are scripts, but the language syntax is all controlled by
| button presses and dialog boxes, so it's difficult to screw up.
|
| If your kiddo is more programming-inclined, PICO-8 is self
| contained.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Self-contained and constrained on purpose; if you go with e.g.
| Unreal or some other big engine, there's a real risk of making
| something too big, whereas pico-8 limits you in how big a game
| can be.
| fractorial wrote:
| FWIW, I also started writing code when I was 11 years old as well
| & I did so on Roblox.
|
| Eventually, I branched out into hosting a webserver in PHP &
| writing small demos in Unity (though I would recommend Unreal
| nowadays).
| jvm___ wrote:
| I got AI to make this for me a few months ago. It took a few
| prompts, including fixing a couple bugs I introduced by accident.
| It even picked the emoji's.
|
| https://rockpaperscissorslizardsomething.neocities.org/
| ActionHank wrote:
| My son is in the same age group. These are some notes for what
| worked well for him.
|
| Godot and Gamermaker are great because they have loads of
| tutorials on YT. He can sit down and work through those pretty
| comfortably. These work better than Unity \ Unreal because those
| have so much to learn and a long time before you have something
| playable and many tutorials would switch out to an IDE and had
| loads of files which overwhelmed him.
|
| He started with Scratch and built up to some pretty complex
| gameplay. What's nice with this is that he was able to remix
| existing games he liked that others have published. This meant he
| learned more as he modified. Checkout griffpatch on YT for the
| more complex stuff.
| copperx wrote:
| MegaZeux is where it's at.
|
| The graphics limitations make it really fun.
| jcmfernandes wrote:
| https://github.com/hajimehoshi/ebiten (golang) and
| https://github.com/gosu/gosu a (ruby) are, IMHO, worth exploring
| if you want to put some emphasis on coding.
| convivialdingo wrote:
| Another one to try is GameSalad. It's paid but has a forum,
| knowledge base, support, and generally aims at the younger
| developers with visual coding.
| Arelius wrote:
| Roblox and Fortnite UEFN are both platforms that have a lot of
| batteries included, and nice around building. Roblox is longer
| invested, but Fortnite has much better constructed financial
| incentives. But they are both code platforms, luau for Roblox and
| verse for Fortnite (maybe it has BP support)
|
| UE is good, has BP, and it's nice to be using pro tools from an
| empowerment perspective. I'd maybe pick a starter game to start
| from rather then from scratch...
|
| Also, about Lua, It's not so far off from JavaScript (pre
| classes) just tables instead of objects, and you have to
| construct prototypal inheritance from more low-level metatable
| methods. But after you get past the higher level quirks/syntax
| you should feel right at home.
| noblox wrote:
| Strongly recommend against Roblox, as it's got a pretty long
| history of being predatory towards children through marketing,
| sales cuts, etc.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Decker is fairly "powerpoint-like" in the sense that it's
| organized around a set of "cards" that can be drawn on. It's
| designed to allow users to create simple interactive projects
| without any programming, but there's also a powerful scripting
| language available for more sophisticated projects.
|
| http://beyondloom.com/decker/
|
| Some examples of how people are using Decker:
|
| https://itch.io/games/tag-decker
| solfox wrote:
| My kids love making their own board games. There are simple kits
| from amazon with blank boards, cards, dice etc - great for
| creativity.
| will5421 wrote:
| > They are a very creative kid currently experimenting with using
| Power Point/Google Presentations to create a crafting and turn
| based combat style game but is running into the obvious
| limitations of this setup.
|
| What limitations exactly? These will guide recommendations.
| svec wrote:
| I highly recommend Scratch! I wrote a post of the resources that
| my kid used. It's the lowest friction way I know of to get kids
| actually creating something fun, with a pretty fast fast feedback
| loop.
|
| https://chrissvec.com/scratch-resources/
|
| On there I recommend 2 excellent tutorial series by Digipen that
| got my kid started, and then a higher level "Scratcher" to follow
| who has excellent tutorials that are more advanced than the
| Digipen series.
| singhrac wrote:
| Scratch is great. I learned Scratch as a ~11 year old and it
| sparked a love of building things that brings me joy even today.
|
| I think the reason Scratch was good is that it channels your
| interest in building something fun and interactive and gives you
| a limited set of tools to figure it out, like "how do I make
| bullets?" -> understand how the touch event works. But it doesn't
| force you to do that much of it, unlike a real game engine
| (Unity/Godot are nice for later but not a first introduction I
| think).
|
| Also one of the best things about making a video game as a kid is
| you can show it to your friends! Getting feedback and navigating
| your limits is a great learning experience ("no, that's not
| possible because...").
| f3z0 wrote:
| Scratch from MIT labs! This is what all the kids at hacking time
| use to learn coding in SV.
| f3z0 wrote:
| Scratch from MIT labs is what all the 9-12 yo kids at Hackingtons
| use to learn game dev in Silicon Valley. Have fun!
| danap wrote:
| lindyFrame
|
| Not limited to games, and also setup to share with others.
| Already repository for various plugins to the platform.
| TicTacToe, etc.
|
| http://dandymadeproductions.com/projects/lindyFrame/lindyFra...
| jansanchez wrote:
| My son started with Scratch and did that for a few years. Then he
| tried Pico-8 when he was about 10 years old and got really
| interested on it. About a year ago, he tried Godot, and has been
| using it since. He is mostly a self-learner so he was able to
| pick up each of these on his own. I only gave him suggestions on
| what to try.
|
| I would recommend starting with Scratch as many have suggested.
| It is easier to pick up than other options, and kids can always
| move onto something more complex later on.
|
| There is also Arcade MakeCode (https://arcade.makecode.com) which
| is similar to Scratch.
|
| Some of my son's projects:
|
| - Godot: https://arandompsi.itch.io
|
| - Scratch (rather old):
| https://scratch.mit.edu/users/codewithliam/projects/
| samiv wrote:
| Just for giggles I collected some links here to some of the less
| known projects and engines (outside Unity, UE and Godot)
|
| The market is well saturated indeed!
|
| https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
|
| https://twinery.org/
|
| https://scratch.mit.edu/
|
| https://editor.construct.net/
|
| https://microstudio.dev/
|
| https://gamemaker.io/en
|
| https://www.buildgamebox.com/
|
| https://gdevelop.io/
|
| https://www.modd.io/
|
| https://editor.p5js.org/
|
| https://www.alice.org/
|
| https://defold.com/
|
| https://phaser.io/
| bronlund wrote:
| As several people has pointed out here, don't focus on
| programming. That can kill the urge to make games pretty quick.
| And an important thing often overlooked, is prototyping. Whatever
| kind of game you are making, find a way to make a fast mockup
| using paper or whatever - and test it.
|
| That being said, you should take a look at simple game engines
| like; Twine, GDevelop, TyranoBuilder and PICO-8. Just remember;
| the easier they make it to do simple stuff, the harder is it to
| do difficult stuff :)
|
| To see what kind of games normal people make, check out
| https://itch.io
| teucris wrote:
| Multiple people have suggested modding games. This is what led me
| to computer engineering as a career- specifically Quake III mods.
| Having games that are easily extended and hacked makes for an
| incredible exploratory environment, especially if it's a game
| that the child loves.
|
| What's out there?
| brentjanderson wrote:
| https://rpginabox.com/ is fantastic. Includes a lot of great
| assets, constrained enough to ensure you can actually build
| something, open enough that you can build a lot of different
| things with it.
| tomxor wrote:
| Plain HTML and JS, aka a web browser.
|
| I know it's every programmers favourite past time to hate on the
| web platform, but BASIC had a similar hate, yet it kind of was a
| well placed language for beginners.
|
| The web browser is the closest modern equivalent of booting into
| a basic prompt on $YOUR_FAVOURITE_80s_PC, without being as arcane
| or limited. You can hit f12 and start poking around immediately,
| on any modern computer... You don't have to install compilers,
| libraries or complex dev tooling, just write a single plain text
| file and you have access to a pixel buffer (canvas) in the most
| documented and optimised scripting language in the world.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| There are also plenty of HTML game frameworks like Phaser,
| which allow you to put sprites on a screen and show particle
| effects almost immediately:
|
| https://phaser.io/
| porter wrote:
| Try using cursor to write games using natural language. It takes
| some iteration to get what you want, but kids seem to love it.
| nxobject wrote:
| I've had fun teaching kids to program for the Playdate, both with
| their top-down RPG toolkit, and their Lua developer environment
| as an intermediate level exercise. I find they're really
| motivated on this platform for a few reasons:
|
| - The fact that they publish their games onto a polished
| handheld, rather than a toy environment;
|
| - The fact that the Playdate has robust developer environments
| (incl. simulator)
|
| - The fact that they learn Lua, which they know is a pretty
| transferrable skill in gamedev;
|
| It also provides a nice environment for kids to start learning
| graphics techniques and work at the event loop level, if that
| interests them too.
|
| The downside is that you have to shell out for a Playdate, but at
| least not the dev environment!
| Svoka wrote:
| If your kid likes Roblox, do Roblox Despite all the shade, I
| think that Roblox is the company that does by far the most in the
| market to moderate their space and make it safe for kids. It is
| still online place.
| sflanker wrote:
| I have used Kaboom https://kaboomjs.com/ to help a diverse group
| of kids build a simple 2d game together. It's a toolkit
| specifically geared toward 2d platform we type games but it could
| be adapted to make other 2d games. I liked that it was just
| JavaScript under the hood so you can introduce many programming
| language concepts, but the engine makes it easy to get things
| going with very little code. There are also lots of opportunity
| to focus on design aspects over pure code.
|
| You can also use it online with Replit
| https://replit.com/@replit/Kaboom#code/main.ts which lets you get
| up and running quickly and share your work online easily.
|
| Apparently it is no longer actively maintained by Replit, but I'm
| guessing it still works fine and there is also a community fork:
| https://github.com/kaplayjs/kaplay?tab=readme-ov-file
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| The natural evolution from PowerPoint would be something like
| HyperCard. Unfortunately, there are no good modern versions of
| HyperCard that are easily available. I guess the closest is
| Decker, it was discussed on HN here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40292181
|
| There's a native version on itch: https://internet-
| janitor.itch.io/decker
|
| For me, this is frustratingly close to being absolutely awesome,
| but the visual adherence to what HyperCard looked in the 80s
| prevents it from being a genuinely useful professional tool. It
| replicates the reason why HyperCard died a slow, painful death.
|
| For learning programming, it might be perfect, though, and the
| visual restrictions might make it less daunting for children to
| create their own graphics.
| ksec wrote:
| I would definitely recommend RPG Maker.
|
| I know this may be controversial, but I really do miss Flash. For
| a lot of people it was _the_ platform for creating games.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| love2d is quite interesting. also, modding games can be a good
| start. i started getting interested in how games worked through
| modding half life 1. it was a game i loved and hence and easy
| thing for me to imagine stuff in. from basic levels and learning
| its entity system and vertex editing functions soon the itch came
| for custom textures and code. theres likely more mod friendly
| games nowadays (not having to code in C for example :'))
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| Garry's Mod
| klik99 wrote:
| My 7 & 8 year olds have been making stuff with Pulp
| (https://play.date/pulp/), they really love seeing their results
| on the Playdate device.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Two great starting points are level creation in Fall Guys and
| custom maps in Starcraft 2.
| DeveloperErrata wrote:
| I want to plug the Little Big Planet series of games, it's what
| got me into programming when I was young and I think it still has
| a lot of charm
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-25 23:01 UTC)