Kodu is a great game creator toolset - but its successes are so many that you'll ultimately feel cramped by its limits
Along these lines, Kodu Game Lab is like nothing else out there. Kodu is basically a set of tools for the player to create their own game. The success of the game lies in its versitility, and equally the eventual failure of the game will come down to the limitations that such a game-creator device will inevitably present.
While the brief tutorial will give you clues as how to program a small habitated world, getting the Kodu from A to B, you will soon find yourself creating a world from scratch with the high hopes of finally creating that dream game of yours.
In general, the basics of game design are fairly simple to get acclimated to. You can create and paint terrain to your linking, insert items and characters, all choosing from an initially decent variety of subjects and ****. The art ****is all of one cloth, so while you can choose from a variety of different color patterns and objects, all will look as if they're of the same general world. At this point its pretty easy to get started creating the setting/world in which your game will take place.
The challenges begin with object programming, which is probably no big surprise. Behaviors are notoriously challenging to make work right, and while Kodu does have some helpful hints for you, you may feel like you're working for long hours at simple behavior construction. For example, its easy enough to create a playable character and plot out some enemies. It becomes much more difficult to make the enemies act right - so while perhaps you want them to pursue you within a certain distance, it is fairly simple to create an enemy which will ram you non-stop and won't then switch to a different script to then circle you. This is really where you'll put in long hours trying to get the behaviors just right, as in most game programming. Getting the enemy to be challinging but not too challenging, not to self-destruct, to approach the player correctly, not to continutally do action 1 when you want to switch to action 2 - all take A LOT of time to get right. Thankfully, it is fairly easy to set hit points, weapon damage, character speeds - but all will require massive amounts of tinkering to finally get an enemy to behave like you'd want, and even then you'll bump into the limitations of the game.
(This picture shows a character script set)
The first main limitation is the number of insertible objects and enemies into the game. While there are a number of these to pick from, the set will limit what you can insert - so for instance if you want to have a Viking in your game, you sadly cannot - but you can choose form a Kodu, a turtle, fish, and some others. And of course you cannot really change the look of anything in the game other than its basic color.
The second main limitation is in the scripting. There are only a set of possible actions available for any object, and while they are enough for you to script a decent shooter for instance, creating a role-playing game, or even something totally new will likely not be in the cards. To interact with objects, you can shoot, eat, or carry them - but creating a dialogue script is not really possible for instance.
And the third main limitation is the available size of the data of any creatable world. Each world can only be filled with so much information, and even if you're creating a simple adventure game, you'll likely find that after mapping out a few arenas and a dozen or so enemies along with perhaps some trees or rocks, you'll quickly be running out of storage space which will severely cramp your ****if you like creating massive worlds.
With all of that said, it's really quite impressive to see so many options available in a pretty accesible format. Perhaps the best example of what Kodu can do is in the pre-generated worlds created by the Kodu team. In a simple parusal, you'll find Space Invaders ****shooters, a simple platformer, and other arcade derivations - all pretty simple for sure, but seeing the flexibility of the world creator is definitely impressive. On top of that, you can share or download other player's creations, which is exactly what makes this game a pretty solid playable game - i mean what would be the fun of spending hours on a game and not being able to share it right?
Bottom line, Kodu Game Lab is surely an excellent game creator toolset for the money (about $5) and will definitely keep you entertained as you seek to bring a material reality to the game you'd like to make. While it definitely has its limitations, these are all the more evident by all the options you'll have in the first place - the more freedom you have, the more you can feel the ones you don't. However, Kodu is clearly, despite its limitations, one of the best downloadable indie titles on XBL, and delivers not only an interesting toolset, but the promise of more player control. By putting the tools in the hands of the plebs, those workers may just smash the machine and start creating their dreams...
Rating - 9/10