MIT STEP Lab Presents

Gameblox

Gameblox is a blocks-based programming tool designed specifically for making and playing games.

Archived

Overview

Gameblox is a blocks-based programming tool designed specifically to provide an easy on-ramp to game design.  Just as  MIT App Inventor democratized mobile app creation, Gameblox provides an environment in which novices can easily create entertaining games by  embedding some of the more complex programming tasks such as collisions, physics and gravity within the blocks.

More advanced game designers might also find Gameblox a useful tool for rapid prototyping in their iterative design process.  Gameblox was initially designed for use in two edX courses, 11.126x (Introduction to Game Design) and 11.127x (Design and Development of Games for Learning).  It is now freely available at Gameblox.org, but no longer actively developed. 

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Research

“As for Gameblox, it’s pretty cool. If you are a programmer, you’d probably prefer actual code to blocks, h! However considering the purpose behind developing Gameblox, it’s great. It would serve very well as a prototyping toolkit. Game- development- specific requirements such as collisions, physics, event handling, inputs, etc. have been handled well”. – 11.126x student

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Project Specifics

Audience

Aspiring Game Designers

Content Area

Computational Thinking, Game Design

Platform

Web

Project Contact

Paul Medlock-Walton