# Using a game maker in the classroom, honestly

Flockbay can work well in a classroom, but it is a desktop install that needs a live connection, and there is no site licence. Here is what that means before you plan a term around it. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your own Claude, ChatGPT, agent or API key. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, on the official Godot engine.

Source: https://flockbay.com/game-maker-for-classroom/ · Updated 2026-10-01

## The constraints, first

Anything you are considering for a room of students should tell you its constraints before its features, so here they are. Flockbay is a desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is downloaded and installed on each machine. It is not a web page you open, and there is no version that runs in a locked-down browser tab.

Building requires [an internet connection that stays up](/answers/does-flockbay-work-offline/). The chat, asset generation and world data all come over the network. If the connection drops mid-lesson, students can still play what they have already built, but they cannot continue building. On a school network that throttles or filters aggressively, that is the thing to test before anything else.

There is nothing to buy per seat and no site licence. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your Claude or ChatGPT plan, your own agent, or an API key. If you are budgeting for a class, the app costs nothing and neither does the hosted AI each account gets every day; a student who connects their own Claude or ChatGPT is using their own.

## What a lesson actually looks like

A session has a shape that fits a period reasonably well, because the slow parts of game development are not in it. Nobody spends the first three lessons on syntax. A student says what they want to make, Flockbay reads 2D or 3D from it and creates nothing until they confirm, and then it asks its questions, one round at a time, each with a recommendation. What comes out is a brief: what gets built first, what comes after, what is not in this version. Nothing is built until the student approves it, and reading that brief before they do is a good five minutes of teaching on its own.

Then Flockbay builds it. In 3D that is terrain, water, a character and the GDScript that makes them behave; in 2D it is tile ground, a band of scenery and a player controller who walks, falls and jumps, with the tiles, the edges and the collision all following from which cells are ground, so nobody loses ten minutes hunting for the right corner piece in a palette. Flockbay runs the game, sends it input and reads the debugger before it hands it over, and the student presses play on their own machine. On a single period that is not a small difference.

That means the feedback loop inside one lesson is complete: play, decide it is wrong, say what is wrong, play the change. A student who has never made anything before will have something they can show at the end of the first session. [Whether it is good](/blog/how-to-judge-a-game-you-did-not-code/) is a separate question, and a better one to spend the term on.

The natural unit of work is a place rather than a genre. Ask for a corridor that feels tense, or a village that feels lived in, and you get design conversations. Ask for a platformer and you get twenty near-identical platformers.

## What students are doing that is worth assessing

Because the code and the construction are done for them, the visible work is the brief, systems design and judgement. A student decides how far apart the landmarks should be, how long night lasts, what the player learns in the first thirty seconds. They say it, or, when the call is exact, they move the landmark themselves: the tools Flockbay builds with are also buttons around the Godot editor's 3D and 2D view, with Godot's undo. Those decisions are legible, defensible and arguable, which makes them easier to mark than a script that either runs or does not.

They are also decisions the student has to make from playing. This is worth being explicit about with a class: nobody in the room can tell you [whether the jump feels right](/blog/secrets-of-game-feel-and-juice/) except the person who just played it. Handing the judgement back to the student is the mechanism, not a gap in the tool.

The code is not hidden. It sits in the project as normal GDScript, and [a student who wants to read it](/answers/can-i-edit-the-code-myself/) can. In a class that is meant to teach programming, that is a way in rather than a wall — they read code that already works and that they asked for.

## Where it is the wrong choice

If your machines are Chromebooks, it runs only on Intel or AMD models and only once IT turns on their Linux environment. If your students cannot install software, it is not the tool. If your network cannot be relied on for the length of a lesson, building will stall and you will spend the period troubleshooting rather than teaching.

If any of those apply, [a browser-based tool](/blog/why-browser-ai-game-makers-hit-a-ceiling/) is the honest answer, and there are good ones.

Where it fits is a room with real Windows, Mac or Linux machines, a stable connection, and students who are old enough to manage their own account. In that room it removes the single largest obstacle to a term-long project, which is that most of the term goes on getting anything to run at all.

## Questions

### Is there a classroom or site licence?

No. Flockbay is free, AI included: free hosted AI every day, or your Claude or ChatGPT plan, your own agent, or an API key. Flockbay builds from a library of ready-made objects, or with Godot's own shapes. There is nothing to license per seat, per team or per school.

### Will it run on Chromebooks or iPads?

Not on iPads. On Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD processor it runs in ChromeOS’s Linux environment once IT turns that on, and school Chromebooks usually have it off. It has to be installed on each machine.

### Does it need internet during the lesson?

Yes, for building. The chat, asset generation and world data come over the network. Playing an already-built game does not need the connection.

### What is the engine underneath?

Godot, which is open source. Each student ends up with a real Godot project on disk, which they can keep and open elsewhere.

### Can students see the code?

Yes. It is ordinary GDScript in their project. Reading it is optional, but in a programming class it is a useful place to start a discussion.

Download Flockbay free: Free to download for Windows, macOS and Linux. Test it on one machine on your network before you plan a term around it. https://flockbay.com/

Related: [Game maker for schools](/game-maker-for-schools/), [Game maker for teachers](/game-maker-for-teachers/), [Game maker for education](/game-maker-for-education/), [Game maker for students](/game-maker-for-students/)