Kris Ritter

I couldn't find a previous discussion on this, which kind of suprised me, given that you're generally all creative types and a lot of you have Xbox 360's

Kodu Game Lab is available on Xbox Live for 400 MS Points ($5ish) under the Indie section, although it's actually direct from Microsoft Research.

It's a very slick little visual game creation platform with great, if cutesy, graphics including some nice atmospheres, water and particle/light effects.

It works along the lines of Klick 'n' Play, where you build a 3d level and then program your objects by way of iconised building blocks of code.

For example, the first game I made was a sheep herding kind of affair, albeit you herd blimps from a jetplane.

At it's most basic, that involves painting an area of floor, plopping down a blimp and a jetplane, and 'programming' them by selecting from a simple set of 'action/reaction' statements:

Jetplane: [Gamepad] > Left Thumbstick >> [Move]

Blimp: [See] > Jetplane > Close By >> [Move] > Away > Quickly

Of course, you'll probably want to create games a BIT more complex than that, but honestly, it's ridiculously simple. A small child could easily create fairly complex and great looking games for the Xbox 360 with it.

And you can share your levels over Live, too.

Anyhoo, some screenies here and a review here

Cristiano

Damn you, Kris. I just spent some time with it, and while kooky, it is amazing. I just did the tutorial where you have to program it to be able to pick up apples, and to have a light to cross the bridge. It took me a bit to figure out that it meant to program it to glow when it was holding an apple. So freaking cute though, and quite remarkable. It is a shame it is shoved off in the Indie games section, it should get top tier XBOX Live billing. Great stuff.

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* slu stuff *