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One of the more fascinating releases on the XBLA over the weekend was Kodu Game Lab. As the name suggests, it’s not actually a game, more of a game creator. Allowing pretty much anybody to create a game how they want. As this is a quick post – here’s the blurb from the back.

“Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The visual programming environment allows rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input. Share your creations with friends over XBOX LIVE.”

Now, when I was a fairly socially inclusive, yet creatively marginal member of the Blitz Basic community, I did write a few games. Believe me – it was tough, as unlike applications or plugins, they needed to be visually impressive as well as fun to play (a lot of my games could’ve been brilliant if I could’ve drawn). Nevertheless I did make a few (usually for weekly competitions – which allowed me to design games quickly), and they were fairly well received, as well as being senses of personal achievement for me (I loved putting games onto the now defunct Blitzcoder community!).

I also found “game creator” software to be lacking. They were okay, but usually specialised in one genre of game, rather than a huge  library that you could run with, but I could see their place in the world – as introductions to game programming. As such I will try and do a review of Kodu Game Lab & let you know my thoughts.

However, have you done any programming? Any ideas you have for video games? What resources do you use for programming. Share your thoughts in the comments!