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!

(I design card and board games as a hobby, the industry is very friendly and loves to mentor!)

In the context of StS, the specifically were discussing how the mechanics of the Defect character would work. In something more like an action game eg an FPS, you could do something similar with trying out different sets of stats and perks and measuring approximate TTK vs other builds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)

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.

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."

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.

Lucky I got heavy into programming, which scratched somewhat a similar itch (and it's well paid).

What about rpgmaker? That's the one I found when I was 12

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.

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)

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.

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

Several winning entries have been written by children or teenagers, with some help from parents.

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.)

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.

A pragmatic pedagogical thing I love with Snap! is the ease of creating custom blocks, including macros / custom "C-shaped" control structures. If you have some time, this allows you to "scaffold" helpers that will allow him to create interesting stuff while focusing on things you want him to learn and hiding issues you don't.

* Example: I wanted to teach rendering a custom costume with e.g. health bar or text label. My son is already familiar with Snap!'s turtle-drawing primitives that can render lines & text but there was an impedance mismatch — you draw on the screen, and it does support snapshotting all current drawings to create a costume, but using that involves some careful save-and-restore of much global state (e.g. pen color). I built him a "draw costume" block that takes a body of turtle-drawing commands and affects only current character's costume. If you ask me, Snap! should have had similar API built-in; but what's more important it was easy for me to add one that looks and feels as-if it was builtin. This way I can decide what I want to teach ("you can compute how you appear") and what is incidental complexity.

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.

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.

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)

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).

There's also PenguinMod which feels like Scratch with more assets.

  * 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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Keep your kids as far from Roblox as you can.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro...

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.

Lots of interactive ideas could be easily implemented with already available assets (sprites, backgrounds, sounds), customized too. It's more tooled for platformers. There are many nice tutorials (loadable projects). Tons of books (we used 'Super skills. How to code').

The other day this 8yo even had to face first ever concurrency bug - the race condition. Alas there are no ready mutexes as such in Scratch, but we found a way to synchronize the execution.

At times I did feel that it'd be faster to just type the code, but the kid actually felt more in control doing all the needed coding with touch/mouse.

Also the projects/games are shareable, so friends can load that too.

But from other comments Scratch seems to have picked up a lot of extraneous crap like social and tiktok in the intervening years (decade).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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!"

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.

From the stand point of freedom for the individual to create in their own way digitally it is unmatched. People can learn UI and UX but it’s really hard, nearly impossible to create a vast ecosystem and the the community that flash once was.

Uses p5js, so nicer than pure canvas.

Note there’s a big leap from making a simple physics toy to making a game.

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

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.

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

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!)

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!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickteam

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

* https://scratch.mit.edu

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I WOULD, however, recommend Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN), which is stripped down and focused while still being powerful.

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.

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

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.

Another more powerful alternative is Stencyl: https://stencyl.com/

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

You will not find better...

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

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.

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.

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.

https://phaser.io/

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/.

There's also a neat voxel-based RPG engine called RPG in a Box (https://rpginabox.com/).

For Python, there's pygame, which requires a lot more code, but let's you make sprite-based games in a "real" programming language, if that's more your speed. Python also has classic turtle graphics, but that doesn't usually get you very far for making games.

Finally: I've used all of these (and other) tools with kids in that age group, as a mentor at events like Hack The Future (https://hackthefuture.org/) and Hour of Code (https://hourofcode.com/). Look for an event like this in your area, they are really fun to attend!

Lua isn't tough to pick up given you already know JS and Python. It's a bit of a weird hybrid of the two in its own unique ways. If you show that you are learning it with your child, sometimes that can be a great experience. Löve2D can be a fun, very self-contained sandbox: https://www.love2d.org/

On the Python side, Ren'Py can be a great place to start. Visual Novels may not be half as popular outside of Japan, but Visual Novel-like conversations are everywhere in modern games and you can start with easy to script "Choose Your Own Adventure" Visual Novel conventions and expand to a wide range of genres from RPGs to "life sims" to some form of turn-based strategy games easily from there (and just about anything with more work). Ren'Py starts from its own relatively simple conversation-focused scripting language with Python-like conditions, and then allows you to expand towards custom Python code as you get familiar with it. https://www.renpy.org/

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

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/

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

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.

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.

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...").

– 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!

http://beyondloom.com/decker/

Some examples of how people are using Decker:

https://itch.io/games/tag-decker

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.

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

You are not confined to "console.log()" methods...

Also, setting regression tests with explicit object type checking on well structured source trees will help narrow the search for design flaws (i.e. minify single file includes should be at the final packing and CDN file hash signature stage.)

Best of luck =3

https://github.com/zeroengineteam/ZeroDocs/blob/master/getti...

Very mice, multi programming language support

Also super easy to deploy your game with builtin emscripten generation

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/

https://rockpaperscissorslizardsomething.neocities.org/

What’s out there?

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.

What limitations exactly? These will guide recommendations.

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.

This does pretty much what you have described. It supports scenes, image maps for point and click, dialogues and is low code.

Eventually, I branched out into hosting a webserver in PHP & writing small demos in Unity (though I would recommend Unreal nowadays).

https://dotbigbang.com/

And Humble Bundle has deals all the time on game development and assets.

I know this may be controversial, but I really do miss Flash. For a lot of people it was the platform for creating games.

QB64 is a pretty good modern version thereof.

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...

I think 11y/o is a great age to start writing code! (or, tbh, as soon as you have learned to read and write and some basic arithmetic :-).

The graphics limitations make it really fun.

- Minecraft - Human Resource Machine - The Sequence (Android) - Any complex management game

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.

As much as I’d want to teach my 11 year old kid Unreal Engine, it’s not realistic. Pun not intended.

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.

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.

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.

When I got the itch to make games as a kid (late 80s, early 90s) it was in BASIC and it started with modding existing games (snake, gorillas, hammurabi) and then into making levels for DOOM to play with my friends. Didn't get into "real" coding until the iPhone dropped and I started making my own stuff and switched careers.

Lots of good recs here but here's my take:

- Twine might be just about right based on what you're saying your kiddo is into. It's about the closest thing to hypercard I've found- you string scenes together and with some modest work you can make a great dungeon crawler/choose your own adventure with inventory and variables, etc.

- Gamemaker might be a pretty great place to go after that. Plenty of legit indie games have been made with it. In my experience it's kinda like unity or unreal but less overwhelming. There are plenty of step-by-step "how to make an asteroids game" tuts out there, and based on your kid's interests, you could probably pick one and work through it together.

- Your kid is probably too advanced for scratch at this point, and might get frustrated. I think the Scratch mission is lovely and right, but if I'm 11 years old I want to build "cool stuff" but in Scratch it just takes too long to do that, and the ceiling is too low.

- Everyone who mentioned tabletop is spot-on....if you kid wants to understand how games really work. An exercise you can do is take a video game they like, and make the board game version. Classic example: Mariokart as boardgame. Makes you slow down and think about mechanics, how they combine and interact, player choices- all that. This is stepping up the learning, and pairs well with making stuff.

- Bloxels (which again, full disclosure, I work on) is a game design tool that might be worth a look. We try to have a low-floor (easy for newbs), high ceiling (experts can make cool stuff) and wide walls (big possibility space.) There's logic but no code. The public arcade and builder is here: play.bloxels.com

- Long term: There are SO many interesting things to do with games and in games. I'm excited for you and your kid and where you take it. Being a pretty new medium that comes from computers, it's easy to equate games with coding. But it can be and really is so much more. Have a good time with it.

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.

Once your kid discovers an area of interest within game development, such as graphics, coding, game assets, or level design, they can start exploring more specialized tools and resources. For example, if they're interested in coding, they might consider a kid-friendly game engine like:

    <https://www.kodugamelab.com>
    <https://www.cocos.com/en/>

Game Development with Python and Mods

Python is a versatile and widely-used programming language that's great for beginners. Here are some free resources to help kids get started with Python:

    <https://github.com/pygamelib/pygamelib>
    <https://kidspython.com>
    <https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Programmers>
    <https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-for-kids/> - A good starting point with general Python guidelines for kids.
    <https://github.com/mytechnotalent/Python-For-Kids> - A very cool free book

Hardware and Cybersecurity in Game Development

The hardware side of game development offers exciting possibilities for kids and teens. Here are a few areas to explore:

    Building STEM games: Numerous gadgets, toys, and devices can be used to create interactive games.  This is a good start for getting into Robotics. Ozobot, Beebot, Evollve. Keep in mind that some of these tools can be expensive, but the learning rewards can be significant.

    Cybersecurity games: Gadgets like Pwnagotchi (a Tamagotchi-like pet that "eats" Wi-Fi) and Flipper Zero (<https://lab.flipper.net/apps/category/games>) with its collection of hacking-themed games can introduce kids to cybersecurity concepts in a fun and engaging way. These tools can help them understand how games interact with networks and devices.

    Internet of Things (IoT): IoT is transforming how we interact with the world and has huge potential in game development. Kids can learn to use smart devices, PCBs, chips, and sensors to create interactive games and "smart" objects (<instructables.com>). Here's a resource to get started: <https://github.com/microsoft/IoT-For-Beginners>
   
  IoT opens up exciting possibilities for game development, such as:

    - Revolutionizing player interaction with virtual worlds.
    - Gamifying activities in other industries to make them more engaging and easier to learn.

  Other Areas in Game Dev

    - beyond what I already mentioned, there are many other interesting and exciting paths to take. Consider checking:

    Mobile game development: Creating games for phones and tablets.
    Browser game development: Building games that can be played directly in a web browser using technologies like HTML Canvas (<https://github.com/servercharlie/awesome-html5gamedev>) or crazy 3D JavaScript libraries.

   Awesome Gamedev: <https://github.com/Calinou/awesome-gamedev>
   Awesome Programming for Kids: <https://github.com/HollyAdele/awesome-programming-for-kids>
   Awesome Educational Games: <https://github.com/yrgo/awesome-educational-games>
   Khan Academy Kids: <https://learn.khanacademy.org/khan-academy-kids/>

Other than that, it all depends on which part he'll like more if he starts......graphics, coding, game assets, level design and so on.. by the time he figures that out, he'll be able to pick a game engine for "adults" (for example, Unity)

1. These game engines claim to be kid and beginner friendly: - https://www.kodugamelab.com - https://www.cocos.com/en/

2. Python is a solid all-rounder, future-proof skill

Here are some free resources:

- https://github.com/pygamelib/pygamelib - https://kidspython.com - https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Programmers - https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-for-kids/ - good starting point with general Py guidelines for kids. - https://github.com/mytechnotalent/Python-For-Kids - very cool free book

3. Playing Minecraft, Roblox, beamNG, or any other game that supports mods & user made goodies. It's a good place to start building something in that environment. This can even bring some money if the idea becomes popular among the game's community.

4. The Hardware side of things

- building STEM games - with countless of gadgets, toys and other crazy devices out there. ( ex: Osobots ) These may become a bit expensive quite fast, but rewards on this path are surely worth it - on the CyberSecurity side, there are some cool little gadgets that can run all kinds of clever games - pwnagochi (a tamagochi pet that eats wi-fi to stay happy and needs to be fed), FlipperZero ( https://lab.flipper.net/apps/category/games ) - Internet of Things - ( https://github.com/microsoft/IoT-For-Beginners )

-- smart devices, PCBs, chips, sensors that can make "dumb" objects smart (instructables.com) -- IoT will revolutionize the gaming industry by changing the way players interact with a virtual world. -- gamification of activities in other industries to make them easier to learn/understand/do

5. Last, but not least, there are many other areas of game development

- mobile games - browser games (HTML Canvas games, or crazy 3d JavaScript libraries)

Some extra resources - might be a bit off-topic, but maybe you'll find something interesting

- https://github.com/HollyAdele/awesome-programming-for-kids - https://github.com/yrgo/awesome-educational-games - https://learn.khanacademy.org/khan-academy-kids/

Hope this helps, good luck !

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)

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...