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!
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.)
[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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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/