Hello Everyone,

I’ve got a 10 year old daughter who loves making games in scratch, but she’s starting to run into that boundary where it stops working for you, and starts working against you.

She wants to make an adventure game in the vein of a trimmed down “legend of Zelda: link to the past”

I’ve looked at snap and gamefroot as potential next steps. Would consider a “true” language like JavaScript or python, but I’m worried she would be daunted if the ramp is too steep (maybe with the correct libraries/frameworks?) The immediate feedback and low ramp scratch offers are still important.

Anyone have any wisdom to share? Or point me to something I’ve missed?

Thanks

—- Update:

After some good discussion with my daughter, we’re going to try gamefroot (a proprietary, enhanced scratch) first.

She really wants to check out Gadot too.

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful comments and the help.

  • wim@lemmy.sdf.org
    2·
    1 year ago

    It’s by no means perfect, but Lua with LÖVE is pretty straightforward for 2D games, and gives you a Real™️ programming language as well.

    Alternatively, Godot is a modern open source game engine and framework, and if you stick to 2D and the built-in GDScript, it comes with a lot of nice things for creating levels, maps, animations etc. However, perhaps for a 10yo the barrier to entry might be a bit high.

    • aperson@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      Also, love2d is very similar to the lua sdk the playdate uses, so it’d be easy to port over to a real device!

    • Rhs519@lemmy.caOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll do some reading on it. Never worked with Lua before. Maybe Dad gets to learn too!