If you are already a games programmer of even modest ability, you'll no doubt find this package restrictive, simplistic and a bit pointless. While it's possible to get good-looking results very quickly, the bigger picture ideas have to come from your mind. Created in XNA and delivered to XNA, it has been subjected to all of the same restrictions as any enthusiast developer working for the platform. Kodu Game Lab, while designed by Microsoft's employees, has enjoyed no special treatment in finding its way onto Xbox Live's indie game portal. That gently hyperbolic introduction out of the way, it's probably best to set some realistic expectations. While you're never going to be able to turn out the next Gears of War-alike with its modest XNA-based engine, you've a good chance of being able to approximate any ideas you may have, and the limits of what's possible are wide enough to allow your imagination a long leash. Rather, this ostensibly-for-kids game-creation set has broadened its boundaries to encompass everything from third-person shooters to racing games to RPGs. Here your creations are not bound to a single genre or set of game rules, or even a single visual style. And, of course, the success of LittleBigPlanet's recent efforts to democratise game design, pressing the game's full creation toolset into players' hands, has popularised living room game-making like never before.īut Kodu Game Lab's ambitions outstrip those of its distant rivals, not to mention its paltry price point of 400 MSP. From the Commodore 64's Pinball Construction Set to the N64's Dezaemon 3D shoot-'em-up creation package (not to mention the multitude of level editors bundled in with just about every PC first-person shooter) game-building tools for consumers have been a niche but consistent feature of the gaming landscape. Videogame creator toolkits are far from a novelty. But crikey, if it wasn't just about the best unicycle-based, sea-predator-themed, crooner-soundtracked shoot-'em-up you've never played. Admittedly, it was a game in which you drive an unmanned unicycle around an abandoned piece of scrubland while attempting to shoot down a host of flying sharks with some multi-coloured lasers to a custom soundtrack of Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon". In less than an hour I'd made my first game.
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