Unity has released an asset suite aimed at easing newcomers’ entry into game development.

Aimed at teachers, students, kids or game development beginners, Unity Playground is offering a free, scaled-back layer to Unity that lets users tinker with the engine’s fundamentals to create basic 2D games.

“Unity Playground is Unity’s first project dedicated entirely to our younger users, educators and anyone looking for an initial introduction to game development in a more simplistic form,” reads the asset store description for Unity Playground.

“This 2D, physics-based project contains a collection of single-action Components which you can use as building blocks, and combine them to create any type of gameplay. Simplified Inspectors for both Playground scripts and built-in Components mean that new users will not feel overwhelmed by the amount of options.”

Learn to play

Playground comes with six example projects designed to teach various aspects of the toolset, that can be toyed and tinkered with. The package also comes with a mix of various in-game assets.

Should users feel ready to take the next step, Playground will let them switch back to the default Unity Editor to dig a little deeper.

Despite this welcome gesture to younger creators, Unity has faced its fair share of backlash recently from more experienced developers after suddenly deeming Improbable’s SpatialOS tool to be against its terms of service.

The engine maker has since rolled back that change, letting Improbable developers back into the Unity ecosystem.