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Ask HN: Best stack for building a tiny game with an 11-year-old?

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Re: Ask HN: Best stack for building a tiny game with an 11-year-old?

#31
I started with GameMaker when I was 10 and to this day it's the most beginner-friendly environment I've used. These are the programs kids have actually used to make games.

Your good choices are GameMaker, Construct or an old version of Adobe Flash. Those are the tools kids have actually used to make games. RPG Maker is a honorary mention. The only modern one that I'd consider is Roblox, but that has community baggage, and is a bit more difficult than them.

Unfortunately even the "easy" engines (Godot) nowadays assume you more or less programming, the scene graph, components... The old ones are unmatched.

Re: Ask HN: Best stack for building a tiny game with an 11-year-old?

#32
I would recommend Scratch, the blocks prevent syntax errors, plus there's a simple editor for drawing sprites and backgrounds — my niece used to play with it paired with the book "Scratch programming playground" if I recall correct —.

I'm working on a visual app builder, Breadboard[0], we're not targeting education neither games, but here an example of a tic tac toe game made with it.

Workspace: https://app.breadboards.io/shared/c3c4dc7b-78f7-4e0f-b89f-cc...

Exported app: https://black-creek-7582.breadboards.app/home

[0] https://breadboards.io

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