Klik & Play is one of those mysterious game creation tools that should, by all rights, be long dead. I was personally introduced to it as a wide-eyed, schoolgoing youth back in a time when accessible game creation was still rare. Countless hours, days, and even weeks were poured into dozens of small projects that I would complete and share with my friends. It was (in a word) awesome.

However, this nifty little program was released way back in 1994, which in human years makes it approximately three gazillion years old. Despite its remarkable age, it still clings to life in a way that would put even the most tired and tenacious of EA game franchises to shame. Heck, it doesn’t just cling: it retains its own thriving community, and lots of high-profile people are still making games with it today.

The thing about Klik & Play is that it hits a sweet spot that’s not shared by many other tools. It’s far more powerful than the likes of Sims Carnival, but it’s also slightly simpler and more accessible than Game Maker. And despite being a good 15 years old, it’s still remarkably useful in today’s game creation scene.

Number 1 on the list of cool ideas: a step-through editor.

Klik & Play, like many other game creation tools, is based around the basic building blocks of rooms, objects, and events. It works its magic through a combination of drag-n-drop coding, prefabricated game objects (complete with movement schemes and animations), and an incredibly powerful tool known as the step-through event editor. The latter is an innovation which still has no real peer amongst today’s game creation tools: it allows a developer to run through the game and have new events such as collisions and keyboard presses checked in real-time.

So, what do you stand to gain from Klik & Play? Well, for one, people are still using it here and there. It also happens to be a free download (at least in its “KNP for Schools” incarnation), though you shouldn’t expect much from it if you want to make a commercial game: a little disclaimer displayed at the end of each game’s run-through makes it quite clear that Klik & Play games are not for sale.

Klik & Play allows you to set up a fully functional level in moments. Pirate-cops and snowmen optional.

If this tool interests you, but maybe doesn’t quite fit in with what you’re after, you should really look up the series of game creators that it spawned, which includes the likes of Click and Create, The Games Factory, and Multimedia Fusion. Developers such as Derek Yu have found the series useful in crafting games like Eternal Daughter, and even today the product line stands proudly against others in a world of fun and easy game creation.

Grab Klik & Play now and see for yourself what the early ’90s can teach a whole new generation of hip and trendy young game developers.

We mentioned Python a short while back as an easy introduction to programming, but if you want something that’s aimed more at the young ‘uns and practically guarantees a gentle tutorial for game coding, take a look at Scratch.

Developed at MIT for mysterious educational purposes, Scratch is an animator, simulator and game creator. If you’ve tried out The Sims Carnival,‭ ‬you’ll find Scratch to be similar fare in several ways:‭ ‬it has an easy,‭ ‬visual‭ “‬programming interface‭” (‬those special quotes mean that the words aren’t nearly as scary as they sound), a friendly premise and a broad community of other game creators that you can upload and share your creations with.

Projects are easy to make and come packaged in a very friendly environment.

And yet it adds a few extra points which are worth looking at too. So what’s interesting about Scratch? Let us count the ways.

(1) As mentioned above, Scratch is an educational tool — with plenty of focus on the education. Everything about its design seems to be geared towards helping people learn: code components, for example, are built block-by-block as “puzzle pieces” which only fit together in certain ways. This reinforces basic programming principles by showing users which parts of the code can logically interact with each other, and in what order.

(2) Scratch also makes great use of colour. All control structures (such as while loops and if statements) are coloured in orange, motion code is in blue and variables are in red so that you can quickly identify these components based purely on their hue. On top of that, you’ll be able to see your code while you play the game, and components will flash every time they’re used in the program so that you can have a better understanding of how events work. Ahh, the miracles of modern science!

(3) Finally, perhaps moreso than with any other beginner’s tool, Scratch elaborates itself through demonstration. When stepping on over to the File > Open dialog, users are presented with a lovely “examples” button that takes them straight to a folder with nearly a hundred samples of games, animations, simulations and stories that are ready-built and looking to teach you something.

Check out the examples folder: it'll be your most important teacher.

So, is Scratch brilliant? Well, yes and no.

Scratch’s primary drawback is that it isn’t too powerful. At all. Most of the games on display are primitive (and buggy), and, in particular, the way that they address matters such as object creation and collision detection between sprites is … well, somewhat strange.

But given how determined Scratch is to make the user experience simple and colourful, it still seems to possess great value as an introductory guide to programming, particularly for children. While this may not be the tool for you, it could easily be useful for somebody you know, or maybe even a local school that doesn’t yet know about it.

If you’re still looking for that beginner’s tool to convince you,‭ ‬then just take a look at Scratch and see for yourself just how friendly it is.‭ It’s free, it’s solid and it has a lot of pretty colours. Check the Website here.

What, have they released the first Sims 3 expansion pack already? Not quite: The Sims Carnival is a games creator and gaming portal, and a damn accessible one at that. You can make your own games in no time, upload them to the web, check out other people’s creations, and even peek in at the source code of cool projects to see how they work!

While it may not be the most powerful or revolutionary tool out there, it’s certainly easy enough to get to grips with in 500 words. So start by downloading the software and installing it. When done, fire it up and see what it’s made of.

You’ll be presented with a screen consisting of the game’s canvas, an object pane, and a “behavior” panel (remember kids, we’re dealing with the mysterious American spelling system here). Click on the giant floating spaceship, check how it’s been programmed, and click on the play button at the bottom-right corner of the canvas to preview the game. Understand everything? Good. Delete that ship and get ready to create your own object.

Click on “Import an IMAGE file” and select an appropriate pic for your new game avatar. This picture will instantly become a game object with most of its properties automatically set up for you. You can fiddle with the image by using the buttons below the canvas.

Egads, we've created a monster!

Once you’ve found a suitably ugly image for your nefarious deeds, click on the “Launch Behavior Library” button. This defines all the cool stuff that happens in the game itself, divided into “if” and “then” categories (you should see “if” for now). Click on the “Keyboard” tab under “Basic” and drag it to the behaviour board. Click on the green arrow that appears. Where it says “Conditional”, open the menu and select “While key is down”. Close the dialog using the green arrow again.

Now go back to the library and select the “Then” tab. Select the “Move” option and drag it onto your neatly-made “If” statement. Ooh, it links up! And has its own green arrow next to it! Click on the arrow and check the properties.

What you should have right now is an “If” statement that checks when the left keyboard arrow is pressed down. This triggers an event which moves the object 10 pixels to the … oops, better change that radio button to “move left” instead of right. Click on the green arrow to roll up the window again. Congratulations, you’ve just defined your first object behaviour.

Create three more sequences in the same vein, one for each keyboard direction. Net result: when you run the game (by pressing the play button, remember?) you should be able to move your object in all four directions using the keyboard. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first moving object in The Sims Carnival. It’s smooth sailing from here, mate.

If you like the looks of this tool, check the FAQ and get going! For an even simpler game creation, try out Carnival’s Wizard Tool.

“Sound development is scaaaary!” you think. “I can’t possibly get nice audio for my game unless I trawl the Internet for free sound effects!”

Most developers wouldn’t hesitate to agree with you. But it’s rather strange when you think about it. People are generally willing to code games from the ground up, draw their own graphics, write their own character dialogue and even act as their own PR agent. And 99% of the time they’re absolutely eye-bleedingly awful with at least one of these chores. But despite the incredible array of jobs that the average dev is willing to take on, the task of sound engineer is still considered somewhat … icky.

Sound creation is no more specialised — or difficult — than firing up your favourite drawing app to doodle some random sprites. Yes, it takes a lot of skill and experience to master, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to paddle about in the shallow end of the audio creation pool.

There’s a stunning array of sound effects you can create by simply firing up Audacity, making a noise for the microphone and modifying a few basic traits such as pitch, tempo and echo effects. That’s pretty much it: if you don’t believe me, try this little offering that I helped construct for a 48 hour development competition. Part of my job on this project was to cobble together a few sound effects, and I did everything using only the method above.

“But I’m shyyyyyyy!” you protest. Okay, so maybe you live in a crowded hostel and are somewhat paranoid about your own voice going into a computer. After all, nobody wants to get caught shouting, “PHWEE-OOP-DE-DOOP!” into their desk mic (unless it’s like a fetish or something, in which case you have other concerns). But even then, there’s still a remarkable number of handy sound generation tools wandering around the Internet that don’t cost you a cent.

Take, for example, this wonderful retro sound generator by DrPetter, which offers a wide range of adjustable old-school explosions, jumps, impacts, and pickup noises. Finding similar software on the Internet isn’t that difficult either (with or without the patronising commentary).

Heck, go one step further and dig out the old MIDI skills — pick up something like Anvil Studio and create compact (and easy!) background tracks for your latest project. It’s super awesome.

Still scared of sound creation? Overcome those fears once and for all! Just take a deep breath and give it a try. At the very worst, you’ll create something hideously corny … but that in itself is just a part of the greater educational process. If you’re brave enough, give it a shot and swing a link to your creation down in the comments section.

And so, to all of those who are about to start a glorious audio engineering career: I salute you! Now go get soundcrafting, already.

This section has mentioned Game Maker in the past, but if you’re still not entirely comfortable with getting your hands dirty, then maybe it’s time for a crash course. Here you’ll create your first Game Maker project, from download to executable, after only 500 words.

To start with, grab a copy of the tool from YoYo Games and install it. Skip registration for now.

You’ll be presented with a blank workspace – look for the red Pacman symbol in the icon bar and click on it to create your first sprite. This will be the “skin” for our main character object: give it an appropriate name (“GoodGuy_s”, perhaps), go to “Edit Sprite”, double-click on the green square and draw something in the default space (leave the bottom-left pixel, that’s your transparency colour!). When finished, close the GoodGuy sprite window and repeat the above to create a Pickup sprite (maybe a coin).

Next phase: create objects to attach our “skins” to! Click on the blue circle near the top panel’s sprite icon. On the left of the resulting window are your object name and sprite. Change the name to something appropriate, and change the sprite to the one you made earlier. Create your Pickup object in the same way. When that’s done, return to GoodGuy (if you’ve closed it already, you can still see it listed on the far left). Now we make stuff happen.

Recipe for a bare-bones GM experience: 2 sprites, 2 objects, 3 events and 1 room. That and love, of course.

There are two things that we need our game to do: (1) respond to arrow keys, (2) end in victory when we hit the pickup. These actions are considered “game events”, so click on the “Add Event” button, select “Key Press” and choose “<up>”. Then look at the “move” tab on the right, search for the button with eight red arrows on it, and click and DRAG it into the white “actions” area. A new window opens. Select the up arrow and set the speed to 4. Bam! You have your “up” motion sorted out. Repeat the above for the other three main directions.

Now go to the “Add Event” menu again and select “collision”. You’ll be given two options: select the Pickup. Now we determine what happens when the GoodGuy sprite touches the Pickup in the game world! Click on the “main2” tab on the far right, find the red “End Game” icon and drag it into the action box. The game’s action set is now complete.

Close the object window, go to the top row of icons and look for “Create a Room” (right next to the object button). Left click in the room grid that pops up: you’ll automatically put down a copy of your Pickup object (known as instancing). Neato! Look for the white box that contains the current object’s name, then click on it and select the GoodGuy. Place that somewhere else inside the game room. With that, you can press F5 and play your very first Game Maker game! Well done.

Extra links:

Project example (if you get stuck)

Official Game Maker tutorials (the next step)