Students love to program. Stencyl makes it easy and fun!
Submitted 11 years ago
Community Review for Stencyl
My Take
Stencyl like Scratch is a great way for young students to "learn" programming. With it they begin to understand what lines of codes are. There is math involved and thinking ahead.
How I Use It
I think it can be good for math and for ordering and what happens next. Students learn how to place block and how to use a timeline. I have them write a script/storyboard first, so they can be prepared for when they get on the computer. Problems with the younger students - It's best to show them a few things first. Have everyone do the same scripts so they can see how it works. Using a digital board or overhead is best.
More community reviews for Stencyl
Clinton W.
Computer Information Technology teacher
March 11, 2014
Stencyl is an ambitious project with a lot of promise
I really really really want to love Stencyl. I keep trying to squeeze its potential awesomeness out. Stencyl is "a drag-and-drop gameplay designer" (Stencyl website), modeled after the MIT Scratch project. Basically, it's blocks-based programming made specifically for game design. The sweet part for teachers is that it is free. I've been using this for a couple of years now. This definitely gives students more freedom and challenge than Gamestar. It seems, though, to be very buggy. Stencylforge, Stencyl's marketplace for user-created resources is heavily promoted within the application as the main source for graphics, sounds, behaviors etc. Unfortunately, this fall, Stencylforge was down more than it was up, rendering the whole program a bit clunky and useless and leaving students frustrated and stranded. Stencyl is awesome for making Platformer Games, but when it comes to something more robust, like an RPG, Stencyl has more glitches and frustration than success. Most of it's kits were designed on a previous version and break once imported into the new version. Most of my students do not have the level of experience with the program necessary to troubleshoot what's broken.
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Kelly B.
Librarian
February 28, 2014
A nice program for students to create games without having to know code.
Similar in format to Weebly or PowToon (easy, drag & drop, etc.). Lots of tutorials available, both video & screenshot, created by users and the vendor. I don't think you'd be able to use Stencyl with students younger than 7th grade, unless you have a lot of very tech-savvy students who could help others. Creating a basic game is fairly easy, especially if coupled with a tutorial. Techy high schoolers would have few problems, especially if they worked together. There are extremely useful video tutorials, and I had a tutorial on one screen, and the program on the other and just went back & forth mimicking the tutorial.
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1 person found this helpful.
Scott J.
Teacher
Coeur D Alene, ID
February 16, 2014
Best all around FREE product on the market for 2D game making
As a high school game design teacher since 2002, I am constantly researching and implementing many free and low cost game creation tools. Stencyl accommodates more learning styles and levels, languages and platforms than any of it's competitors, bar none. I have followed Stencyl from closed Beta until now and it just keeps getting better and better.
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