I would encourage a bunch of different games where making a game is a game mechanic, so this includes:
* Little Big Planet
* RPG Maker (from the PS1 days ... I don't know what the new ones are like)
* Super Mario Maker
* Roblox (other comments are saying this is bad? I don't know much, but it was my first thought)
* Dreams for the PS4
The person that made Lethal Company was originally a Roblox dev, so I know that route can work; and LBP and SMM are both great ways for learning how to create engaging and difficult levels. Some of them even have state management.
I played RPG Maker a million years ago and liked it, so I imagine that game or its family is still a nice experience.
I haven't played Dreams, but I've heard it's a strong, interactive environment?
I think Roblox can be bad in a "badly moderated online space" and "potentially abusive monetization/exploitative sharing structure" - the game itself feels good?
the tradeoff is with something like godot you only have examples/tutorials and hardly ever something "finished" or "very fun" or "thing people are playing".
something like roblox or another modding-focused game allows you to see what other people did as inspiration or to show what other people are actually interested in, as opposed to just making things for yourself.
I've massively limited use of scratch in my house because of the "social" aspect. instead of being creative and learning about programming they spent most of their time looking at recommended "programs" by others which mostly consisted of meme videos, annoying sounds, gen alpha slang etc. I never saw much programming "inspiration", at times it almost seemed like allowing them to use tiktok. did anyone else have this experience?
All versions of RPG Maker frequently go on sale on Steam, the older ones you can get for pennies. XP, VX and VX Ace support Ruby as a scripting language, meanwhile MV and MZ supports web export and JS scripting. Can't recommend these programs enough.
I played RPG Maker a million years ago and liked it, so I imagine that game or its family is still a nice experience.
I haven't played Dreams, but I've heard it's a strong, interactive environment?