Nintendo has announced a new game coming to Nintendo Switch in a handful of weeks. The two-minute Game Builder Garage reveal trailer gave the world its first look at the educational game creation tool. Set to launch on June 11th, it also has a cheap price tag of $29.99, and the digital download is 10.5GB in size.
Game Builder Garage teaches the basics of game creation and design without the need for any programming knowledge. Instead, it uses a node-based visual programming approach to allow you to quickly set up interactions between game objects.
The game’s eShop page says that it teaches you to build seven different games step by step (including a motion-controlled ball roller and a racing game). It also says players can exchange codes with friends to download and play each others’ games. You can look at downloaded games in edit mode, which was an annoyingly missing feature in Mario Maker 2. There is of course a free build mode where you can create whatever you want. The reveal trailer also shows that there is an included sprite editor, allowing you to make your own pixel art images.
To make things a bit more fun, the nodes in the editor mode have been personified into strange creatures called Nodon. They have ports that allow you to connect them to each other by dragging a line from one Nodon to another. For example, in the trailer, they connect a Control Stick Nodon to a Person Nodon. This tells the editor that the control stick should allow you to move the character left and right when you play the game.
The Game Builder Garage editor screen
When playing with the Switch in docked mode, you can also use a USB mouse if you wish, or the touch screen if you’re playing in handheld mode or using a Switch Lite. The mouse support is a nice extra feature that will surely be appreciated by some players. There are quite a few different types of Nodon, as shown in the image below.
The many types of Nodon you’ll use to build games
Will you be playing Game Builder Garage? Feel free to comment your thoughts below.
