yep, any and all educational games will get played. there are a whole lot of idle young minds out there. i would say the main issue is whether or not you can make money from it. if you’re able to supplement your income while you work on the game, then i would say absolutely go for it.
I think your idea sounds neat! Have you ever played any Zachtronics games? Those games have kind of a “programmer” logic to them, and might be useful to you in getting ideas on how to dress up programming concepts as game mechanics. I could see Zachtronics fans really digging your game idea. One of their games, Exapunks, is literally about being hacker and doing actual (simplified) programming to beat levels. Another called Opus Magnum dresses up the concept as a “transmutation machine” that you must program to create alchemical creations.
Zachtronics games are on another level, really. I think what sets them apart from “edutainment” games is that they’re not really made for someone to learn programming, they’re a labor of love for people who love to program. And as a result, they just happen to be the most attractive resource to learn programming that I’ve ever seen.
I think that’s a good lesson that all games that want to be educational should take away: don’t feel the need to force material down the player’s throat, instead make a game for someone who loves the subject matter, and the rest will take care of itself.
A few that stick out to me, mostly because I've played them and they're pretty good, are Human Resource Machine, While True: Learn(), Opus Magnum, and Shenzhen I/O. I would say Bitburner too but that's more-so literally programming.
I think your idea is interesting, but based on the examples I've listed, which I must admit is not a huge sample, most of them are played in a sort of GUI experience sort of way. I think it would be very, very difficult to translate the core concepts of programming to a side scroller.
However, as I said, I think it's a really cool idea, just thought I'd point out some similar games in case you had never heard of them.
I think your idea is interesting, but based on the examples I’ve listed, which I must admit is not a huge sample, most of them are played in a sort of GUI experience sort of way. I think it would be very, very difficult to translate the core concepts of programming to a side scroller.
Unfortunately, I haven’t played any of these games, but I have scrolled through that category myself to see what’s out there. I agree with you, that a side scroller is probably not the best option to introduce programming concepts from a game-mechanic perspective. I think didn’t really communicate well, that the way I envision my game differs a bit from these approaches. I don’t actually want to focus on specialized in-game mechanics that help to visualize algorithms or programming concepts. Instead, the game is meant to be a very mechanically trivial, story focussed frontend, that makes achieving the programming tasks more exciting.
You could maybe make some kind of a lemmings style game where functions change the behaviour of the creatures in order to achieve some kind arbitrary of goal. Like arranging their colours based on the rainbow, or something to that effect. The creatures would be a stand in for data, and the things the players can do manipulate the data to achieve a specific outcome. Is that more what you were thinking?
First off, Rare had a reputation for good games, but they were cute, child friendly games. Conker was even a cute character with child friendly games. Then they made this… thing, which starts with Conker hungover from a night drinking and quickly descends into him fighting a giant poo monster. The game was rated R/18, which was crazy for Nintendo. The amount of little movie references everywhere was insane, also.
Just recently played A Hat in Time. We’re never told, but every detail points at this being the fantasy adventures of a little girl with A LOT in common with Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, an overabundance of imagination and hyperactivity. Charming and funny (well, save for Queen Vanessa, which I feel was instead a masterpiece in ambience). Loved it, gotta try the DLC. Just be ready for hard platforming at many places.
Paper Mario. I actually have the original game and the N64 to play it, but play on the switch instead. I really enjoy it. I also tried Palia on PC, but it doesn’t feel right.
Try Blokada 5. It sets up a local vpn inside your phone and blocks all the ads and trackers. The application is free and open source. Don’t download it from the play store as it downloads version 6, which requires a subscription and does cloud stuff (version 5 instead works locally)
This right here, I’ve been using Blokada for the last few years and it stays on permanently. My biggest gripe is that a certain social media website (starting with an R) which we shall not name have their own built in ad platform which Blokada is useless against other than that it’s perfect.
Personally I've had some issues with ads getting through 5 on a few devices. Version 4 always works in those cases, even though it's a bit less efficient (apparently).
Separate of that it also works with VPN Tunnel, which is great for getting around cell providers that block tethering.
Plex will cast to a Chromecast with subtitles. It will also fetch them if you don’t have an SRT file in the folder of your video with the same name. Lenguages is also selectable at the time of fetch. I do not pay for pro. Nonetheless, I have not tried jellyfin and cannot tell you if it is possible there or not. My guess is it should.
Idk if lucky patcher still exists, but i used it for a while.
If its an online game there’s not much to do.
If its an offline game that shows ads when you’re connected to the internet, then you can install a private local vpn like Tracker Control to specifically disable internet access to that app.
Invizible Pro also works iirc, but that might be overkill for your purposes.
Private DNS like NextDNS others didn’t work correctly for me but YMMV
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