Nodon my head in delight
Joe Merrick
A while ago, I wrote about the many different games and pieces of software tailored towards teaching people how to make games. I even went through a mild fascination with Dreams, and I dabbled enough with Super Mario Maker 2 to actually finish a level or two.
But, it has to be said, I’m a bit of a fraud. I’ve really spent most of my time playing all the amazing (sometimes terrifying) creations made by other, more talented people. As much as I like to imagine I’m full of creative ideas, it’s always hard to actually get round to making anything.
Enter: Game Builder Garage.
I really do think Nintendo has cracked it with this one.
The first and most important point of difference with GBG is that it puts all the maths up front. As intimidating as that sounds, it works.
Unlike Dreams and Mario Maker, GBG really gets you to consider rules and logic before anything else when you make something. When you put a wee guy in your empty creation, he doesn’t do anything, because you have to physically link his inputs to values created either by button presses or even number generating Nodon.
Ah yeah, Nodon. I almost forgot. Nodon are nodes with wee personalities; there’s even a Scottish one. They all perform different functions and have inputs and outputs.
There’s actually nothing new about Nodon, really. A lot of motion graphics, 3D design and even software development packages actually use nodes to help conceptualise how things work; it’s like a little graphical blanket to comfort you from the harsh world of text editors and manual coding.
What’s new is how pleasant the Nodon are. At a glance, even when presented with the worst Nodon spaghetti with inputs and outputs crossing over each other everywhere, the wee characters popping out the boxes let you know generally what each bit does; there’s a button press, there’s an explosion, there’s a block to be destroyed.
And so far I’ve actually stuck with my creation: an eight-player five-a-side arcade football game. I was hoping to have it finished in time for this issue of Bit Socket, but you’ll need to wait till next month. It’s been a great experience learning as I make it though.
You only have to do the first, most basic tutorial before you’re let loose on free creation mode, and I think that’s be best way to do it. There’s no better way of learning than by working out how to solve problems yourself, and GBG is so fast at just letting you change a few Nodon and test out those changes right away.
It’s not like Dreams, which very quickly becomes a case of tweaking the look of things to get them just the way you want them to look.
Is GBG better than Dreams? It’s hard to tell. Dreams is more capable, and more powerful. It’s probably more versatile as well. But it’s also more of a faff to make things in.
By nature of GBG’s deliberate simplicity, it seems limited in comparison. But if my experience so far is anything to go by, it’s much better at making you think like a game designer. And some of the stuff people have made so far is great.
