I have a niece who wants to make a video game. I have 0 experience teaching and am very likely to recommend her some crazy complicated shit that will turn her off to the idea. She’s 8. Anyone have experience with this? Her first instinct was to try and make games in the Roblox engine but I know exactly how exploitative that shit is and how nontransferable those skills are
Libre software is a must
Here's a browser-based teaching tool for python UI:
https://py2.codeskulptor.org/
If you look through the demos you can probably find something that would interest her and try to reimplement it or modify it.