this is great advice. let them focus on designing gameplay right now. once they've designed a core game loop and they're proud of it, maybe they'll want to lear

this is great advice. let them focus on designing gameplay right now. once they've designed a core game loop and they're proud of it, maybe they'll want to learn how to implement it in software, or maybe they'll want to make some sort of physical product (game book, card deck, miniatures, etc.), or maybe they'll want to move on and design a whole new game. tabletop simulator (on steam) is an easy platform for designing tabletop games. it has lots of built-in assets, you can import your assets, it has lots of built-in concepts that are common to games (zones/hands/inventories/meeples/etc). rules-enforcement is mostly done by the players (multiplayer is supported) just like when playing games in real life, so it's great for prototyping and playtesting without coding up formal logic.