My son made this game: Golden Clicker, his 2nd clicker game. This is really a great game-genre to learn and teach programming!
kongregate.com/games/bugninja/golden-clicker
kongregate.comPosted Jan 10, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC
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kongregate.comHis first clicker game was Water Clicker, and he got some great feedback here, so I really wanted to post his new game to Reddit too.
He's thinking of in-game achievements as you get further along in this game to add mini challenges and such. No ETA.
This genre of game is just brilliant for teaching young people to code. Every time you add a new element to it, you get to solve new programming puzzles, or learn new techniques. This time we spent a great deal of time figuring out arrays.
8
Oh, wow, I left feedback on Water Clicker a bit back from then! :D
He's improved by so much since then, I really had a lot of fun with this game, and I look forward to any new updates or games he comes out with!!
1
Thank you! I told him that this time around I would wait to release it until he addressed some "details" and applied more "polish" to the game. I think he did pretty well. He aligned labels on buttons better, asked for feedback on the language in the info-bubbles, etc.
2
I'n not sure if the "Gold Mine" works. I bought it in-game and the text didn't say I incremented to 1 gold per click.
This seems like a valuable time to teach about bug reports. Is this on a github repo where someone can open issues, fork, or submit PRs?
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Yikes, he had a pretty bad bug there. It should be showing gold per click, yes. We found it together, should be fixed now, thank you!
2
This is a good start. I would add a counter to the miner/driller etc so you can tell how many you have currently. Also it took quite a while for me to get 10 rare gems to try out one of those options, perhaps add in a way to upgrade rare gem drop chance using gold and credits?
4
I personally agree there should be levels for upgrades too. That's an interesting upgrade idea too. Right now, rare gems are totally random, but very very rare.
EDIT: Saw an upgrade he's working on, and he has actually added a counter to the upgrades on the left. Not sure if it's working yet, but I see it happening.
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peice of gold
You got a typo there.
3
LOL, oops, thank you, he can fix that.
2
Thanks for fixing the rare gem not saving bug. Still nothing shows your gold per click. It starts off with a number (apparently not the right number as it's too low) and then immediately disappears. Also would still like to see permanent upgrades rather than temp ones in particular hold clicking. In any case I'm glad your kid got a kick out of creating a game. It's pretty. Thanks.
2
Thank you, we were able to fix this bug together, it should be showing gold per click now. Thank you for the feedback and compliments too :)
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You're quite welcome.
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He'll grow up to make great games.
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Thank you! I hope so too. He takes on new challenges each time he starts a game, and that's pretty cool to watch.
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How old is he, if I can ask? I'm a game developer (professional) and I have to say this is a great game. Very simple and scaled back, but it's a fun game, and there's a bit of clever game design.
Excellent game. He definitely deserves a lot of praise for this one.
Just the animation on the click alone is brilliant! I can see a lot of quality peeking it's head out from this game.
2
If this is in construct 2, add the browser object and then you can use the 'on suspend' action to record the wall clock time. Then use on resume to check the new walltime against the old wall clock time.
This way you can count the seconds that pass when the player goes to another tab, instead of the game freezing while the user does something else.
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He's actually using an HTML5 Javascript framework I developed and another IDE - all code based. But ultimately, yes, we should be able to take a similar measure to calculate lost time for when the tab is not in focus.
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I think it's an important feature for an idle game.
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You're totally right. We have to figure this out.
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Fun little game :)
Feedback:
You can't purchase the upgrades on the right with credits and "peice" should be "piece" on the first 3 upgrade on the left!
Tell your son to keep up the good work!
1
Uh oh.... thank you for the bug/spelling report, I'll let him know. And even I missed the spelling error while testing for him. That's embarrassing. Thank you for noticing and for letting us know. I actually told him that I was going through it looking at the details while testing, arg.
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I'm still unable to buy the upgrades with credits, so I'm not sure if you've addressed it yet. Just though I'd bring it up.
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I asked him about it and he said he still couldn't figure it out. I'm going to help him dig in to the code this week and figure it out. Thank you for the reply, I didn't know he was still looking for how to fix this.
1
I found another bug. Buying the Triple Click allows you to hold click, which I assume is only supposed to happen after buying Hold Clicking.
Other than that, good stuff. :)
EDIT: Hold clicking doesn't seem to be working any more, I actually have no idea what caused this bug. It just went back to normal out of nowhere.
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Thanks, we'll need to test all these upgrades again. I bet it may have something to do with some last minute changes before it went live. Changes I told him he should probably make too - so I'll take the blame on this bug, hopefully he/we can get it fixed soon.
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UX Suggestion:
Have the gold mines start out at one, so the amount of gold mines match the gold per click, instead of being off-by-one.
1
Love this clicking effect <3
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Thanks! This was how I taught him about arrays (and a little about particle effects). EDIT: He's still having some trouble with arrays though. I think we took on something a little too lofty for our first lesson.
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I wish my parents taught me this stuff. I've barely gotten functions down, and I'm 15. Good for you! Good for your son!
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[deleted]
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Nothing special.
-16
Well, he never claimed it to be. It was merely to get some feedback since he apparently got some useful feedback for his son's first game as well.
The title also seems more like a statement that might have intended to start a discussion about how this genre is a great way to get young people into programming.
Which is great, since programming is not only becoming an increasingly useful skill later in work life, but because it's a great skill to have in general.
6
Well, i'm happy for him that he enjoys creating games and getting feedback! Perhaps in the future he'll be making better idle games that are more different then others with way more features :)
-2†
We are working on coding right now, a truly special game will happen I think, it's going to take some time.
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This is definitely the best way for kids to interact with this sub and probably reddit in general, through a parent. A couple weeks back someone who said he was 11 years old posted a game he made. It was a really impressive project for someone so young, and most of the comments praised his efforts.
However, there were a few people who just really criticized him harshly, really mean and petty stuff. Who does that? He responded to those comments and it was clear that it hurt his feelings. It is awesome to have a chance to show off your work to people who can appreciate it but there is just too much risk for bullies. It is great that you are posting on his behalf to help make sure it is a positive experience.
I could understand the criticism that maybe this isn't the best place for that type of post, but people always have the option not to upvote or downvote if they feel that way. Given the amount of upvotes/comments this post received, it seems the community does consider this an appropriate place for beginners to post their work.
Your son is off to a great start! You must be very proud.
If the title wasn't "my son made this game", it would have 0 points.
Possible, yes. Though we really appreciate how this community encourages young people to keep trying. This game is better than his last, and I'm excited to see what he does next.
I am proud :) Watching him work away at it just reminds me of myself at his age - which is 11 actually.
I don't want him on reddit and social media yet. His older brother is all over it, but it takes a little more confidence and maturity to deal with some of this stuff. I posted his last game here, and we got awesome feedback, so he pushed me to do it again.
Side-note, I explained to him that by doing this, we should expect some harsh criticism. I created games for Android myself, and I get some seriously mean feedback sometimes, so I showed him the kind of stuff I get, just to reassure him that he's not alone, and sometimes you have to brush off the really mean stuff and move on.
Even kids should accept criticism, even if it's harsh.
First, it depends on what you mean by harsh. Sometimes criticism is negative to the point that it is disrespectful (as it was in this case) and no one should accept blatant disrespect. Here is one of the comments in question if you prefer to judge for yourself:
Second, I agree that accepting criticism is an important skill for kids (and adults) to learn. We do not do anyone favors by sheltering them from helpful criticism. However, helpful criticism will always be based off of what kind of performance can reasonably expected, not perfection. You wouldn't criticize a 2-year old for not being able to color within the lines. Similarly, you wouldn't criticize an 11 year old for not reinventing the idle games/clicker genre with his/her first attempt at a game.
Third, you should be prepared for the level of criticism that can be expected from your audience. Even if the above two assertions are true, if you are posting somewhere that has a reputation for disrespectful comments then you are somewhat responsible for being exposed to them. That is why I said I thought it was a great thing that he is posting on his son's behalf. He has the ability to put those comments into context (i.e., "people are sometimes dicks on the internet") rather than having his son take them to heart.
First, the criticism there wasn't disrespectful, the comment itself was disrespectful.
Second, if someone shows a drawing made by a 2-year old to me, and I say it's bad, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just judging the drawing, and regardless of who made it, it would still be bad.
And third, "people are sometimes dicks on the internet" isn't context. He would just be hiding criticism from his son and wasting a chance to help him make his game better.
Any criticism is helpful, and there's no way to disrespect someone by just criticizing their work/projects.
Seems like your distinction is mostly based on semantics, I stand by what I said in my response to you.
If your criticism of a 2 year old's drawing is that it is "bad", that is not really information he/she can use to improve. Even if you were to be more detailed and say "this is a poor approximation of what you were trying to draw" that isn't really helpful either because it might be the best that he is capable of given his stage of development. If all you are doing is going around evaluating drawings based on some ideal standard of quality then that might make you feel special but you aren't really helping anyone.
So, I had the same problem. My friend, who is only 13 (he was 12 in November 2015 [Bdate-26/11/2002]), made a very good game for his age. But there wasn't any good commentary. https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/3y6vhz/download_clicker_a_game_by_my_young_friend/ Some developers are not Native American/English, so they or their parents can't post and describe their game here well, because they don't know English here. Also, they may don't understand how to register here. So I posted his game here, but people hated me, because I just posted not my game. And people hated this game, because it wasn't great, such as AdCap, Clicker Heroes, Trimps or Crusaders of the list idols.
I suppose it will be hit and miss for beginners posting their work here. One can only guess why they were so welcoming in one case and not the other. If they are looking for a more supportive response, there probably are subreddits out there that would be welcoming.
When I'm developing games I sign on to the GameDevLeague chat room. I know that the Unity channel is fairly active but I see other platforms in there and I'm not sure how active they are. It isn't a place to go for a pat on the back so much as a place to ask/answer questions during the development process. I think if you asked for constructive feedback on a game you'd get some participation. I've found it to be a very helpful and pleasant game development community that is friendly to beginners.
For what it's worth, I think it was a great achievement for your friend and developing such a great skill at a young age is definitely its own reward. Hopefully he wasn't discouraged by the response!