Game Development for Modern Platforms

This is the second course in Michigan State University's game development specialization on Coursera, and it picks up where the intro course left off. Over about 19 hours, Brian Winn walks through building one complete 2D platformer in Unity, then shows how to package it for web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, with keyboard, controller and touch input all supported. It is pitched at intermediate students, and the reviews back that up: people with some Unity or programming experience get the most out of it. Complete beginners should start with the intro course first.

Students like that the whole course builds one game instead of a new one every week, so there is time to polish animation, UI and gameplay, and the final week has them ship their own platformer. Winn gets warm marks as a teacher, one student credits the two MSU courses with getting him through Unity certification, and two praise the advice on clean scripts and project organisation. The complaints are specific. The multi-platform material, the headline topic, only skims the surface. The tutorials move fast and skip over why certain parameters matter, so one student watched first and built later. One 3-star review calls the paid track overpriced for what it saw as introductory content.

It sits beside Unity courses that cover 3D and current Unity 6, so this is the narrower 2D option, and it is free to take. The catch is age: sample reviews run from 2015 to 2019 and there is no update date on record, so expect an older Unity interface and some translating. Take it if you want a university-style course with a finished, shippable 2D game at the end. If you want current Unity 6 workflows or 3D, one of the neighbouring courses is the better pick.