Teran00bia is a blank slate, a world with nothing in it. I can also share the Xbox 360 version, but you have to “friend” me on Xbox Live first – my gamertag is “Accordion Guy”. If you have the Windows version of Kodu, you can download Teran00bia here. It’s a small, flat square world suitable for experimentation.

I often start with a simple, no-fuss world that I created called “Teran00bia”. In addition to a programming “language”, Kodu provides you with tools for editing the worlds in which your games take place. In later installments, I’ll show you more game-like elements and the “code” for a game of mine called “ Stupid Sparkling Vampire Game”.

In this first installment, I’ll show you how you can build a simple little program that lets you drive an avatar around a small world. If you’ve got kids (or know some) who are curious about programming, or if you’re looking to try a completely different kind of programming, get Kodu on your Xbox or PC and give it a try! This is the first of a series of articles on Kodu programming that will appear here from time to time. If you’re using Kodu on a computer, you have the additional option of using the keyboard and mouse. Kodu was designed to be programmed with the Xbox 360 gamepad, which you can use if you’re programming it on the Xbox 360 or a computer (if you’re using a computer, you’ll need either a wired Xbox gamepad plugged into one of its USB ports or a USB adapter for your wireless Xbox gamepad). Here are a couple of videos that should give you a bit of Kodu’s flavour. Kodu’s a little tricky to describe – it’s one of those things that’s much easier to show rather than tell. If you don’t have an Xbox 360, you can download the Windows version of Kodu for free. It was released for the Xbox 360 last summer as an Xbox Indie Game you can download it for 400 Xbox points - about 5 bucks – or you can try the free trial version (it’s time-limited, but full-featured). Kodu was built using XNA, Microsoft’s framework, toolset and runtime environment for building games for Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune. It was designed to be a gentle introduction to programming that would appeal to children, but many adults – myself included – have ended up getting drawn into it, spending hours constructing and tweaking game worlds. Kodu is a system created by Microsoft Research for programming videogames without using a traditional programming language instead, you use a combination of menus and visual programming. Last week, I presented Kodu (pronounced “Code-ooh”) to a group of teachers and high school students at Corpus Christi Catholic Secondary School.

Download kodu game lab for android