A young friend wants to spend the rest of his summer vacation making a computer game (could be Windows or iOS/Android). The theme will be maximizing welfare benefits, e.g., SSDI, Medicaid, OxyContin prescriptions, public housing, Obamaphone, TANF, SNAP, etc. The author had the idea of a player “trying to grab welfare checks like Pokemon,” which I think implies a 3D virtual world. The author has only a minimal programming background so this can’t be done by coding feverishly in C or Java.
One idea is RPG Maker, which seems to be able to target all popular platforms other than Xbox, PlayStation, and similar. Is that an appropriate tool for this? Or are there better tools?
Take a look at GameMaker, which is deeply discounted right now through Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/gamemaker-rebundle
I think you mean PACman, and that’s been done to the 9’s.
SNAP, et al. are pure peanuts, the big money game is in corporate welfare, and the best name for that game would be BAP (Buy A Politician).
He should look at the old 8-bit game MULE for a strategy based game that is fairly simple and might work out well on a portable device, especially if he can get multi-player working. MULE is a capitalistic game about screwing over the other players and building wealth via a settlement on a fictional planet. The game could do something similar concerning building wealth via government handouts. I think the concept is hilarious, BTW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.
If programming isn’t an end in itself like it is for most startups nowadays, it can be quite simple. Just program it in imperative Java with static variables.
Javascript with a WebGL framework (three.js, BabylonJS, Pixi.js). I liked three.js.