I'm a full time Unity developer now (see http://www.underthegarden.com http://www.underthegarden.com), and while it's a really powerful toolkit, some of the bug

I'm a full time Unity developer now (see http://www.underthegarden.com http://www.underthegarden.com), and while it's a really powerful toolkit, some of the bugs and problems I've encountered through no fault of my own have been pull-your-hair-out territory for me; they would literally be impossible for a beginner to overcome. While getting something running quickly is great, I'm not so sure having your instructor fix stuff up in your project every couple of days is the best way to start a programming for beginners course. It sets up the wrong mentality; that programming is complicated, stuff breaks even when you didn't touch it, or when you touch something completely unrelated, the best way to solve problems is to Google them or ask your instructor instead of think, and that learning the API more is the best way to get better at problem solving. This is nothing against Unity in particular; it's amongst the best of its competitors, and I don't regret choosing it for my work; it's just the nature of the beast when dealing with massive existing code bases. That said, I think getting started with graphics and sounds is a great idea; I'd just use something a lot closer to the metal and less complicated. Blitz2D would have been my choice 5 years ago; I'm not so sure now (how is PyGame?).