Kodu Game Lab is rapid game making platform for creating small games. It’s currently being developed by Microsoft Research. It is available for the Xbox in some countries on the Xbox Community Channel and is now available for the PC.

Created games cannot be shared between the two platforms.

Kodu is currently in beta with the Technical Preview available for download at http://fuse.microsoft.com/kodu

There is also an Academic Beta version that schools can apply to be involved in.

The PC version of Xbox, which Planet Kodu is mainly concerned with, supports game creation and game play with either a keyboard and mouse or an Xbox controller. The Xbox controller must be “for windows” with a USB adapter.

Up to 4 Xbox controllers can be used to support up to 4 players.

Kodu is an object an event driven visual programming language in which various Kodu characters and objects can be programmed to respond to game events.

Kodu uses icons to create WHEN / DO statements. It also uses the metaphor of pages to describes different states a Bot or Object can have. Each bot and object can have up to 12 pages of code or 12 different states.

Instead of variables, Kodu makes available 37 different scores which can be used to broadcast and trigger events. Scores can also be used to act as timers and even contain game scores!