Best Games to Learn Game Development

Gamedev is a very hands-on field that mixes a lot of different aspects of both art and computer science.

You can either spend thousands of dollars on an accredited game design program as I did. Or, you can take your gamedev education into your own hands, and just start making games now and learn by doing as you go.

It may be a little unconventional but this is actually a viable path into a gamedev career - and one that has propelled gamedevs just like you into stardom.

In a previous post, we talked about some of the best coding courses to take if you want to get your hands dirty with game development. Turns out, lots of games themselves have game design mechanics and teaching tools purposely built into them.

Software developers are collaborative by nature. They’re continually learning from each other, asking questions, and sharing information on forums like Mozilla and Stack Overflow. Game developers take this to the next level by turning their careers into a lifestyle and a community.

Here are the best games you can use to teach yourself game development!

1. Super Mario Maker 1 & 2

This one is the most obvious choices on the list. Released in 2015 and 2019, the Super Mario Maker series gives you everything you need to build your very own Mario levels. There is no better way to learn how to make a platformer than by using the definitive game in the genre.

It’s become such a popular tool for learning basic level design that world-famous game developers like Keiji Inafune (Megaman), Matt Thorson (Towerfall), and the creators of Elite Beat Agents created their own levels for fun. Polygon did a weekly series about it between September 2015 to June 2016.

But if Mario isn’t your cup of tea, there are similar games like it. LevelHead has editing tools that let you do some really creative and fun stuff with level design, and make games that resemble arcadey platformers like Super Meat Boy.

2. Little Big Planet

Any list of the best games to learn gamedev skills on would be incomplete without including Little Big Planet and everyone’s favorite adorable little sack of zippers and yarn.

Little Big Planet is fun on its own merit as a 2D side-scrolling platformer, but the game’s defining feature is its level creation tools. Players are able to create, edit and share their own custom-made Little Big Planet levels filled with contraptions and googley-eyed building blocks. It even lets you create your own level assets similar to how you would in Unity.

The game’s community has spawned over 9 million user-generated levels. Regie Fils-Aime, the former CEO of Nintendo of America himself, insinuated that he thought Little Big Planet belonged on the Wii instead. It’s easy to see how it could have inspired future Nintendo titles like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Yoshi’s Crafted World years later.

3. Minecraft: Education Edition

So far we’ve just looked at games that had game design tools built into them for player enjoyment. Now we’re looking more closely at more educational games - those made specifically with the intention of training the next generation of game developers.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games of the last 10 years and the best-selling game of all time. It inspired a generation of future game developers. Minecraft’s fan community has used it to create truly awe-inspiring worlds, to-scale replicas of real-world cities, and even fully-functioning computers and even nuclear reactors.

It was only a matter of time before a  new edition of Minecraft was made specifically for classroom use.

Minecraft: Education Edition and Minecraft: Hour of Code let educators create lesson plans for coding and AI. Minecraft: Adventurer teaches computer science basics - where you use visual code blocks to navigate a character through a level similar to how you would build a JavaScript program. You can even switch between visual editors and see what your commands look like in traditional JS.

4. Space Engineers

Space Engineers, a sci-fi survival game released in 2013, isn’t quite as well known as the other game’s on this list, but it has a cult following of PC gamers who have evangelized the game.

On the surface, Space Engineers is a base-building survival game similar to others in the genre like Subnautica and Astroneer. We’re choosing to talk about it here because of one feature in particular.

In Space Engineer, you can use programmable blocks that use actual C#, one of the most widely-used programming languages in the games industry. Those you can program these blocks to operate machinery like mining robots, long-range weapons, and automatic motion sensor doors.

It’s not in itself a teaching tool, but it’s a fun way to beef up your coding chops in your spare time.

5. RPGMaker

Maybe open-world sandboxes, platformers, and base-building survival games aren’t your thing, and that’s totally ok. For those of you with a love of turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Earthbound, this one is for you.

RPGMaker gives you everything you need to create your very own RPG. It offers developers plenty of documentation in the form of tutorials, support forums, and an active community of both players and designers.

It’s not just a learning tool either. RPGMaker has been used to create both critically-acclaimed games like To the Moon and indie gaming cult classics like OFF! and Lisa: The Painful.

6. Twilioquest

This is another educational tool made for the purpose of training the next generation of game developers. It doesn’t just focus on programming concepts like Minecraft: Education Edition either. Twilioquest is a game that has you actively learning how to write code to save the world.

TwilioQuest is set in an epic sci-fi RPG setting that takes place in a virtual world. You play as an Operator, an elite team of programmers defending humanity from the evil Legacy Systems.

This game will teach you how to write code in JavaScript, Python, and PHP and teach you about data structures like strings, numbers, booleans, and so on. The game world itself is inspired by 16-bit era SNES classics and takes place in creative, programming-inspired settings like the Top Secret JavaScript Lab, the Pythonic Temple, and the Flame of the Open Source.

And the best part? It’s free forever.

You can download TwilioQuest here. I also encourage you to check out their upcoming presentation at the monthly SF Game Development Meetup on August 24th. It’s a free online event and anyone is welcome!

Games You Can Clone as a Beginner Gamedev

It’s common for those learning rudimentary game development skills is to copy versions of retro arcade or popular mobile games. It’s a great way to get familiar with the basics and get your feet wet before you start diving into your own projects.

Pong/Breakout

We’re lumping these two together because they’re functionally similar.

Pong and Breakout are Atari classics and some of the first commercially-sold video games ever made. They’re arcade games without many elements or sophisticated programming or AI. It’s just sprites on a screen and user input.

You can think of either of them as a video game in its most basic form. Building your own Pong/Breakout clone is a great way to learn concepts like hit detection, scoring systems, and screen constraints.

So many budding game developers make Pong/Breakout clones as their first project that it’s now a part of many Computer Science and gamedev curriculums like Harvard’s.

Flappy Bird

Flappy Bird clones have are all over the Apple and Google Play marketplace. There are memes and internet jokes about how low-effort Flappy Bird clones are everywhere because they’re just so common.

It’s easy to see why. Flappy Bird was hugely successful and its peak was earning $50,000 a day. It was so addicting that developer Dong Nguyen discontinued it after feeling guilt for its overuse. After that, prices of phones that still had the game installed skyrocketed.

Flappy Bird has simple mechanics and is easy to replicate - there are JavaScript tutorials about how to make your own, and Flappy Bird clones are featured in a lot of gamedev Udemy courses.

Wrapping Up

There are a lot of great games that each you basic coding and game design skills and we don’t have the space to mention them all. We hope that some of these give you a starting point where you can start learning game development skills in a fun and low-risk environment.

If you need a little guidance on the way, follow me on Twitter at @JonnyJ17. My DM’s are open, and I’m happy to share anything I know!