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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.)
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SurveyJS
JavaScript Form Builder with No-Code UI & Built-In JSON Schema Editor. Keep full control over the data you collect and tailor the form builder’s entire look and feel to your users’ needs. SurveyJS works with React, Angular, Vue 3, and is compatible with any backend or auth system. Learn more.
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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:
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gb-studio
A quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system
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
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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
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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
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Many great suggestions in this thread. Some that I didn't spot:
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 show that you are learning it with you 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/
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pygamelib
A (not so) small python library for console (as in terminal) game development. It is developed as a framework to help learn development and python in an entertaining way.
Eventually, they can move on to more advanced game engines like Unity.
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:
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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Python-For-Kids
A FREE comprehensive online Python development tutorial FOR KIDS utilizing an official BBC micro:bit Development Board going step-by-step into the world of Python for microcontrollers.
- 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
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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 (). Here's a resource to get started:
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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.
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awesome-gamemaker
A curated list of awesome libraries, snippets, guides, and projects for GameMaker.
https://gamemaker.io
You will not find better...
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p5.js
p5.js is a client-side JS platform that empowers artists, designers, students, and anyone to learn to code and express themselves creatively on the web. It is based on the core principles of Processing. http://twitter.com/p5xjs —
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.
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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)
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p5.js-web-editor
The p5.js Editor is a website for creating p5.js sketches, with a focus on making coding accessible and inclusive for artists, designers, educators, beginners, and anyone else! You can create, share, or remix p5.js sketches without needing to download or configure anything.
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/.
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Try Enu
https://getenu.com/
Enu is a 3d playground where you can control objects with code. It uses Nim - language very similar to Python and easy to pick up.
Nim forum post with announcement of Enu 0.2 and some useful links: https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/10700
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phaser
Phaser is a fun, free and fast 2D game framework for making HTML5 games for desktop and mobile web browsers, supporting Canvas and WebGL rendering.
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.
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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.
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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.
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mu
Soul of a tiny new machine. More thorough tests → More comprehensible and rewrite-friendly software → More resilient society. (by akkartik)
I have a kinda unconventional way to teach kids programming 1:1 using tools I make myself.
10 years ago I was using https://github.com/akkartik/mu
Now I've started using https://akkartik.itch.io/carousel
It's only a couple of kids each time. But they seem to be doing ok.
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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
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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
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- 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
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Browser game development: Building games that can be played directly in a web browser using technologies like HTML Canvas () or crazy 3D JavaScript libraries.
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awesome-gamedev
A collection of free software and free culture resources for making amazing games. (mirror)
Additional Resources - might become useful along the way
Awesome Gamedev: -
Stream
Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video. Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
