Hrm. Game making is a big topic. Director/flash or whatever from Macromedia are simple for small projects but a real nightmare (from experience with Director 7) for larger projects. I hope I'm wrong with their later offerings but from what I know, I dread the day I have to work with their products again. I have never played with Dark Basic or any other basic languages. For starters they may be ok. Basic, Python and Java are good languages for most games. I wouldn't try to code a Quake clone in one though. Not impossible but I wouldn't expect the performance from it. Side scrollers and simpler puzzle games are simple enough for these languages. If he wants even more down to the metal then pick up a good compiler, I'd suggest MSVC++ (standard edition .net is fine and cheap, it just doesn't come with optimizing compiler.) as most free libs out there target this compiler first for the windows platform. There are free C/C++ compilers but you'll be in for some headaches working with them if you are just starting out. You'll be in for some headaches and frustrations anyway because programming is generally a frustrating past time. I hope your nephew is patient. ;) For simple library for graphics I would start with libSDL (www.libsdl.org). It's simpler to figure out initially than DirectX and OpenGL setup is trivial. It limits to only one window in a windowing environment but most games don't need more. Lots of support libs as well. OpenGL and SDL are levels simpler to set up and get going than DirectX. There are other libs but for starters that will keep him busy for a few years. :) Poor guy.