Sploder is an in-browser game creation software that runs in flash. It is free to join and a great tool to teach the basic of game design.
The website has the following as its Mission Statement:
We aim to create a place where young people can express their creative ideas and reward each other through positive feedback and encouragement. With our diverse set of game-making tools, members can discover many different ways to design game levels, make stories with narratives, and challenge themselves and their players.
We believe that the world can be changed by creative people who use their minds to make the world better. By offering a place where people are rewarded for creativity in the context of games and play, we hope to point them toward a path to a more creative future.
As a mission statement this is great and really appealed to me, as the games are simple to make offering 5 game creation options. Sploder regularly updates their games and the in-games tools are updated occasionally.
Sploder is an excellent tool for teaching the basic of simple game design but the site is not perfect for children. Once a game is published people can comment upon it and not all the comments are polite and constructive. Also as a teacher there is no way to batch create username and passwords, as a result I had to create each account individually which took a fair amount of time. All accounts have to be linked to an e-mail address, which I did not want to do due to e-safety issues, so I created faux e-mail addresses which worked well as it doesn’t ask for a confirmation code however this does mean that if that passwords can’t be retrieved via e-mail so I would advise keeping all usernames and passwords stored somewhere in a Word document! Sploder is a wonderful teaching tool but as a drag and drop game making site there are limits as to what can be produced.
The retro arcade game creator is a simple platform creator.
The children were tasked with making either a platform game or retro arcade game. I had the children working in pairs as I felt they could work together to solve problems and support each other. They worked carefully and produced some wonderful games which I have linked below.
Give it a go, see
what you think and maybe create your own!