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Comment by artur_makly | Hacker News Reader

my only beef ( as a dad to a 10yr old ) is that at all the game he loves playing are incredibly bloody violent.

- Far Cry - Assassin's Creed

*exceptions ( Fortnite )

What kind of games do you recommend that can extend his critical thinking while increasing his focus?

Lastly, is there a WYSIWYG game creation platform that is high-quality/fidelity? not Minecraft/Roblox. I see him making stuff in the game industry one day.

p.s. HUGE props to Elon's edu platform: https://synthesis.is/ it's been worth every damn penny.

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Mario Maker 2 and Game Builder Garage are great for getting into game creation (or at the very least level creation). Super intuitive as well.

As for extending critical thinking, I feel puzzle based games are great at this like Captain Toad Tracker. But also strategy games like Mario Rabbids are great because there's basic math mixed in with probability and action.

Also games like Brother: A tale of two sons (which you can play with him) can go a long way to developing more complex feelings of empathy which might help him in the long run in regards to games that are just mindlessly super bloody violent. Psychonaut 2 is another great one, lots to talk about there and there's some action but it's never bloody.

When it comes to WYSIWYG game creation the name that immediately springs to mind is RPGMaker, though while the platforms are high quality, they are very much not high fidelity. WYSIWYG doesn't work that well together with high fidelity anyway, placing a thousand little griblets by hand can get tedious after a while.

>critical thinking and focus

if he can get into them, i think tekken and soulcalibur are potentially great for both while also having enough action and cool factor to hold his interest. sc might be more approachable for a kid (i was his age when i started playing sc2).

update: i found these WYSIWIG platforms:

1- https://struckd.com/ mobile only

2 - Google's Game Builder https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games-... sadly discontinued.

3 - https://www.sandbox.game/en/create/game-maker/ *but it has a complex crypto component I dont like.

All have the high-fidelity UX I've been looking for.

any others? any others?

Most games on Nintendo aren't that gory. Also lots of "card games" essentially boil down to math/statistics.

All the old games still work today. We still play the original Mario on a 1985 Nintendo.

Portal?

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