Make a game without code
A game is three things: a level, the things in it, and rules that say what happens when. In Jabbertoon's 🎮 Game you make all three by picking, not by typing code: you place things in the level, pick what each one is, and write each rule as WHEN something happens, DO these blocks. It runs in your browser, on a Chromebook too, free, with no download and no account. Press ▶ Play at any moment and play what you have so far.
Play, or build
Open 🎮 Game. At the top, ▶ Play and 🛠 Build switch between playing games and making them.
▶ Play has every game once, on its shelf: yours first (and Play with your cartoon, a level on your cartoon's stage for your own characters: Barrel climb, a run-and-jump, or a race against the clock), then the games in 3D, then Arcade, Sports and racing, and Battles and quests.
🛠 Build has four ways to start:
- Your games: 🛠 Build it opens one of yours to change, ▶ Play plays it, and 🗑 (pressed twice) deletes it.
- A platform game makes one straight away: run, jump, coins, hearts and a goal. If you built a world in 🌍 World, the game is on it.
- Start a new game starts an empty game of the kind you pick. Flat (2D): seen from the side (things fall and jump: a duel), seen from above (things move every way: a maze, a court, a road, a race), or in space (things turn and drift: rocks, ships, invaders). With depth (3D): a place to walk, a trench, an open sky, or space.
A game's four tabs
Open a game to build it, and it has four tabs:
- 🗺 Level: the levels of the game, and what is in each one: each thing you put in it and where, a whole row of them at once, and where each character starts.
- 🧩 Things: each character (its look: a person, a kid, a dog, a cat, a bird, a monster, or one you drew or built; its size, the keys that move it, what it does at the edge of the screen) and each kind of thing: a ball, a brick, a ghost. Make a kind of thing once, then put as many as you like in the level. A thing can have states (standing, walking, chasing), with arrows that move it from one state to the next after so many seconds or when something is true: that is a state machine.
- 📜 Rules: the numbers the game keeps (a score, lives), the lists it keeps, what bumps into what, blocks of your own, and the rules.
- ▶ Play: the game, as a player sees it.
📝 Steps shows the whole game as the list of steps that made it, one per button you pressed.
A rule is WHEN and DO
Each rule starts with WHEN, picked from a list: the game starts, a level starts, a key is pressed, something is clicked, one thing touches another or stops touching it, a thing appears, a thing leaves the world, every few seconds, something becomes true, a number reaches 0, or on the beat. Under it go the blocks it DOES: add to a number, make a thing, remove one, jump, push, move toward, play a sound, say something, win, lose, go to the next level, and more. A block can hold blocks inside it: if (with an else), repeat, forever, while, wait until, and for each one. A word starting with = is worked out as the game plays, so =score + 1 is one more than the score.
So "collect a coin" is one rule: WHEN the hero touches a coin, DO remove it, add 1 to score, play the coin sound. Press + A rule to add one. If you have used Scratch, this will feel familiar: a hat that says when, and blocks under it that say what to do.
What you are learning
The words are plain, and the ideas underneath them are the ones programmers use, in Unity and Godot too:
| In 🎮 Game | What programmers call it |
|---|---|
| WHEN … DO … | an event and its handler |
| a number the game keeps | a variable |
| a list the game keeps | a list, or an array |
| a block of your own, and what it is given | a function and its parameters |
| if, repeat, forever, for each one | conditions and loops |
| what bumps into what | collisions |
| states and their arrows | a state machine |
| a word starting with = | an expression |
Games with depth
Under With depth: fly into the screen, the game goes into the screen instead of across it: start a trench, an open sky, open space or a place to walk (grass to the horizon, where you put your Forge builds at their real size and walk round and climb them).
Share it
A level you built with Play with your cartoon travels in a link: press Share & keep, then Copy the link. Whoever opens it gets a copy of their own to play and change. Nothing you make is uploaded by sharing it: the game is in the part of the link after the #, which stays in the browser.
Build it with an AI
An AI assistant that can use tools can build a game for you with the Jabbertoon tools, using the same steps the buttons take, and hand you a link that opens it in 🎮 Game as one of your own games, to play and change. How to connect your AI
The guide an assistant reads has an example, a coin run written as those steps. The site makes its link from the guide at every build, so this is the game that example makes: