My 9 year old is doing a game dev course in town where they use the BBC Micro Bit, a retro arcade peripheral (buttons, screen, sound, handheld), and some Microsoft game dev IDE. It’s incredibly compelling and feels a lot like this. But less than 1/3 the price and much more extensible and well-featured (the screen is colour!). I’m not sure I really see the value of the Playdate.

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christophilus an hour ago | parent [-]

That sounds rad. I’d love to get my kids into this. Got any links to your particular setup?

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nickloewen an hour ago | parent [-]

The game dev environment they’re talking about is MakeCode Arcade. I’m also a big fan of it.

There are a number of little handheld gadgets that you can use with MakeCode—scroll down on the homepage and there’s a section that shows them all:

https://arcade.makecode.com/

	▲	Waterluvian an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah that’s it! I recognize the Micro Bit Arcade Shield and the Retro Arcade as what he’s been using when he shows me demos. I LOVE that he gets to code in Scratch but can jump into Python or JavaScript at any time without the IDE changing. It’s a clear stepping stone.