[Waterluvian]

My 9 year old is doing a game dev course in town where they use the BBC Micro Bit, a retro arcade peripheral (buttons, screen, sound, handheld), and some Microsoft game dev IDE. It’s incredibly compelling and feels a lot like this. But less than 1/3 the price and much more extensible and well-featured (the screen is colour!). I’m not sure I really see the value of the Playdate.

[christophilus]

That sounds rad. I’d love to get my kids into this. Got any links to your particular setup?

[nickloewen]

The game dev environment they’re talking about is MakeCode Arcade. I’m also a big fan of it.

There are a number of little handheld gadgets that you can use with MakeCode—scroll down on the homepage and there’s a section that shows them all:

https://arcade.makecode.com/

[Waterluvian]

Yeah that’s it! I recognize the Micro Bit Arcade Shield and the Retro Arcade as what he’s been using when he shows me demos.

I LOVE that he gets to code in Scratch but can jump into Python or JavaScript at any time without the IDE changing. It’s a clear stepping stone.

[Fred27]

My boys (then 10 and 8) loved MakeCode Arcade. I promised that if they wrote an original game - rather than following the great tutorials - then I'd make them a physical setup with a Pi Zero and some classic arcade buttons. They were very motivated and learned a lot.