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🎨 Art, music and story makers · 🛠️ Making games

Bitsy

By Adam Le Doux. Visit Bitsy

Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.

A tiny, free game maker that runs in a web browser. Kids draw small pixel-art rooms, a player character, sprites and items, then write dialog and link rooms with exits and endings to make short story games and little worlds. It is deliberately simple, so a first game can take an afternoon. Finished games save as a single web page to share or post on itch.io, and a long-running community holds monthly game jams.

Our take: A lovely first game-making tool for story-minded kids; those who want action games should move to GDevelop or Scratch.

Checked in a browser

A browser check on 2026-10-25: what loads, the ads and trackers we saw, and what a child meets first. Not a hands-on test.

Child safety: 4 out of 5No ads; links out to itch.io, Codeberg, a Mastodon server and a community forum, but nothing adult on the page itself.
Data: 5 out of 5No third-party sites were contacted and no cookies were set.
Ease: 4 out of 5A short, plain page with 'make a game | play a game' near the top; the links are small underlined text rather than big buttons.
Cost honesty: 5 out of 5Free, with no upsell seen.

What we found

  • Contacted 0 third-party sites and set 0 cookies.
  • No ads and no ad frames.
  • Links out to itch.io, codeberg.org and digipres.club (a Mastodon server), plus a 'join the forum' link.
  • The page is about 290 characters of text: welcome, make a game, play a game, learn, more.

From the test: A tiny, free, tracker-free game maker; its forum and itch.io links lead to open communities a parent may want to look at first.

The facts
Ages it suitsabout 9-16
What its terms say about ageNo age rule: the editor needs no account and its code is released under the MIT license. Posting games on itch.io or joining the forum falls under those sites' own rules. (terms)
PriceFree. Free (Oct 2026); runs in the browser at make.bitsy.org.
Works onWeb, Chromebook
AccountNo account needed
AdsNone
In-app purchasesNone
The AI in itNo AI.

What's good

  • Free, no account, no ads
  • Very gentle start: draw, write, link rooms
  • Encourages storytelling and pixel art
  • Works on Chromebooks in the browser

Watch for

  • Very limited by design; older kids may outgrow it
  • Mostly keyboard and mouse, awkward on tablets
  • Run by one developer, so updates are occasional
  • Sharing on itch.io or forums means adult communities

Data and privacy

Not stated; the editor needs no account. No privacy policy found on bitsy.org. Read the privacy policy.

Does it work?

No study found; the maker makes no learning claims.

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Where these facts come from

Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.