These days though- kids have access to much higher level languages and libraries and frameworks that can make some of these processes much easier. While it is much harder to understand the tech stack from the ground up- you can do a whole lot with the high level tools closer to the surface.

Kids may not no how to go from BASIC to a video-game- but they don't have to write their games in BASIC. There are point and click game studios, there are really great physics engines available, there are libraries that attempt to make it simple.

I remember learning how to build mods in minecraft ~10 years ago- there were tools out there that allowed you to make creatures or blocks that inherited behaviors programmed in other parts of the game- and you could do a lot with that!

Do you have any pointers to, or keywords I can google, for some of those point and click game studios?

I've not tried to do anything like a game for decades, I'm kinda curious about that readily available tools kids could get their hands on these days... Closest I think I've come is launching Scratch from a RasPi's stock linux install...

Scratch 3.0 (released Jan) is great, if you want the shallowest learning curve. I was astounded-- played with it for 2-3 hours to know what my kid was learning and in that time wrote three simple games.

I've heard great things about 001 Game Creator (free for 7 days, then $60) for more substantial use.

It's been many years since I've looked into it- but I remember using a program called GameSalad back in the day. I used another couple of similar apps in middle school but I don't remember the names