Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

It’s easy, it’s simple, it’s designed for learning.

What I find interesting about your post is that your son is designing on paper. He may be a Game Designer at heart and not a technologist, so you'll have to tease that out. The difference would be whether what he really wants is to learn to build, or to have his thing built.

As a Game Designer, he'll be more interested in the rules, the world, the story, the Game as it lives in his mind.

As a Game Developer, he'll be more interested in the tools, the technology, the experience of playing it on the computer, and hopefully the struggle of iteration and building!

There is a high likelihood that, at 9 years old, what he is envisioning is totally unrealistic for you guys to attempt to build. You are cursed with the skills of a competent developer who is up for a challenge, so you might think it's reasonable to attempt. I'd be careful here. This isn't up to you to "not let him down". Sure, you're Dad and you're awesome, but even John Carmack would hesitate to guarantee he could make good on a 9 year old's first game design. :)

It also sounds like you're unfamiliar with game tech, so this will be a learning experience for you. Are you up for it for its own sake? Or are you just trying to make good on your son's vision? That is a big hill to climb to just have your son look at what you made and go "meh".

So if you think it's interesting to try out, and you guys want to give it a go, I still think the best starter pack for gamedev is Tom Francis's series on Unity on Youtube called "Make A Game In Unity With No Experience".

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUtKzyIe0aB3TZfe2wsIg...

Mind you, this is a 3 year old series. Unity is an evolving platform. Stick to what Tom is using and you'll be okay.

Level 2: RPG Maker, Roblox, Dreams

Level 3: Game Maker Studio, Pico 8, Python/PyGame

Level 4: Unity/C#, 2D game from scratch with C/SDL maybe?

Level 5: Unreal Engine/C++, Build engine from scratch, Make 8/16bit game in ASM

I started coding pretty young (Perl probably ruined me at 12), and what I realized as a teenager was that I didn't really enjoy programming, it was just the means to an end. I wanted to make the computers do something.

I'm a system administrator now. Turns out that most of the problems I wanted to solved had capable people already working on them.

Those years of coding give me such an advantage when things go wrong, though. I've never regretted it for a second.

Secondly, I think you be honest with him and say games are hard and not something you specialize in but if he really want to invest some time learning you’ll help him solve problems and you can do it together. Make sure he’s not just your boss tossing ideas/designs that you have to go implement. Start by googling different frameworks and watching/reading tutorials together. Basically show him the process you’d go through if this was your idea to learn game development. Look into unity or godot, vet solutions, play with some demo apps. Watch some of the videos of people building simple games. Building the basic rollaball game will give him an idea if it’s even something he wants to continue with. Also look for assets that complements his game’s style/theme. Asset development is a common road block so if you start with a character rig and an environment that looks something like what he’s after it will give you some momentum on the actual game mechanics/story/etc. I think if you approach it as a team of equals willing to figure this out, you can’t really lose but don’t expect him to have the fortitude to complete it. Put in as much effort as he does.