I'm setting up a Raspberry Pi 5 as a first computer for my nieces and nephews. I'd like it to include fun games as well as beginner-friendly tools for learning programming, but their parents don't want the device connected to the internet.
I've disabled the Pi's Wi-Fi and installed several offline-friendly programs, including Godot, Geany, Scratch 3, Sonic Pi, Thonny, and Notepad++, along with games such as Minecraft and chess. I'm looking for additional games, tutorials, documentation, or guided projects that I can download and install before giving them the computer.
Something similar to Human Resource Machine would be ideal, though that game is primarily distributed through Steam and I'm not sure it's worth setting up Steam just for one title. What offline resources would be useful for children who are just starting to learn coding?
2 Answers
Human Resource Machine sounds like a great fit for this. It teaches programming concepts through puzzles in a way that feels like a game, so it may be worth checking whether you can get it running on the Pi without setting up a full Steam installation.
The harder part may be finding complete offline documentation. When learning programming, people often look up syntax and function details as they go, so it would help to preload beginner tutorials, language references, and example projects alongside the editors and games.
I’ll look into that one—thanks for the suggestion!