One of the best ways to learn game programming for first time indie devs, but not all that great as a standalone development tool.
The seven tutorials are all extremely well-crafted and introduce universal core concepts that you can apply to just about any game engine - it's NEVER too tedious or difficult, and at just 30 bucks it beats out most other educational resources. I usually gripe about Nintendo games being too formal and hand-hold-y, but it perfectly suits this game's needs.
That said, I reeeeally don't like this game's decision to put object nodons and logic nodons on the same screen, and it completely turned me away from doing anything on my own. Trying to make anything complex integrated into the environment turns the builder menu into a crash accident. It's a visual hassle, and I'd rather just use Construct 3 or Unity if I want to invest time in making a game. Granted, even for how messy it can be, Game Builder Garage is still WAY more user-friendly than any other tool on the market, so your mileage is definitely gonna vary.
Also worth noting that there's no game browser built into the game, you can ONLY play other games by manually finding them on the internet and putting in the code for it - and the Switch STILL doesn't have its own web browser. Completely infuriating.
tl;dr - Top tier edutainment, mediocre game dev tool
The seven tutorials are all extremely well-crafted and introduce universal core concepts that you can apply to just about any game engine - it's NEVER too tedious or difficult, and at just 30 bucks it beats out most other educational resources. I usually gripe about Nintendo games being too formal and hand-hold-y, but it perfectly suits this game's needs.
That said, I reeeeally don't like this game's decision to put object nodons and logic nodons on the same screen, and it completely turned me away from doing anything on my own. Trying to make anything complex integrated into the environment turns the builder menu into a crash accident. It's a visual hassle, and I'd rather just use Construct 3 or Unity if I want to invest time in making a game. Granted, even for how messy it can be, Game Builder Garage is still WAY more user-friendly than any other tool on the market, so your mileage is definitely gonna vary.
Also worth noting that there's no game browser built into the game, you can ONLY play other games by manually finding them on the internet and putting in the code for it - and the Switch STILL doesn't have its own web browser. Completely infuriating.
tl;dr - Top tier edutainment, mediocre game dev tool
2 Comments
yes. doesn't change the fact it sucks, and people have been homebrewing their switches anyway
GutterTrash
2 years ago