Description

Candli is a transmedia platform that enables aspiring designers and programmers of all ages to create video games with revolutionary speed and ease — combining pencil-and-paper art with accessible visual programming methods. With Candli, a person with no prior training can scan their own drawings and pictures and, with only a handful of visual rules, assemble them into a fully-functional video game. In one click, they can then share their game online with friends.

Our vision is that Candli becomes a transmedia game ecosystem in which the player takes the role of a game creator, gently being given the key skills to become a creative hero builder. This ecosystem will feature multiple tiers suited for various ages, starting with an interactive colouring book for young children, up to advanced features such as mathematical functions for older ones. Hence, Candli will provide a support for education, in the fields of development of personal creativity, video game design and history, computer science, mathematics, physics, and others.

History

Background

The key technology behind Candli, its the visual programming language, was first developed by Stéphane Magnenat and colleagues for the Thymio educational mobile robot. While robots are great for tangibility, they are expensive, not easy to expand and impossible to duplicate by their users. This constrains their creativity.

From research…

Then at the ETH Game Technology Center, Stéphane Magnenat and colleagues found that a similar visual language can be used to program video games. Combined with quick asset capture using a phone's camera, this allows to create worlds and adventures directly out of the imagination of the users. They validated this concept in a research paper.

…to a prototype…

Then, Stéphane Magnenat along with Hannes Sommer founded Enlightware as a spin-off of ETH Zürich, and started re-implementing Candli from scratch, as a web-based service. In fall 2020, an early-access alpha version was made accessible on cand.li.

…towards a rich ecosystem!

Using this lean approach, we started collecting feedback from early adopters, such as schools through the Swiss EdTech collider testbed program and the OECD PILA. We now constantly integrate these feedback to improve Candli and bring value to our users.

Features

• capture, smart cropping and import of game assets (images, sounds)
• programming with visual rules
• sharing and remix
• integrated AI-based tutorials
• integrated 2-D physics engine
• any smartphone can be used as a remote camera
• desktop and mobile friendly
• integrated forum and community
• an ideal introduction to game design, computer science and mathematics