I'd highly recommend checking out Elm playgrounds:
In ~70 lines, you have a Mario-like platformer with live code in the browser! https://elm-lang.org/examples/mario
You could use the turtle example as the basis for a racing game: https://elm-lang.org/examples/turtle
And there's even a WebGL implementation for 3D graphics! https://elm-lang.org/examples/first-person
> Another issue I'm facing is that we are French. It's a requirement for us to use resources in French for now as he improves his English along the way.
The Elm Europe community seems to be pretty large. I'd try reaching out to them and see if anybody has French resources.
You could use Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/
There is a localization in French, with every blocks being translated "If" become "Si", "When" becomes "Quand" and so on.
It provides a playground when you can move a sprite, play some sound, basic animation and management of inputs. It manages the event loop, rendering loop, etc. It is doable to some very basic games with a sprite moving/chasing others.
I think it is at the right level because it is very visual and you get the feedback immediately. This is actually used in some collège course as an introduction to programming.
I'd take a different approach. Get him into scripting in Roblox. Both of my kids learned lua mostly on their own just because they wanted to make their own gameplay. Both went on to computer science and are doing 'real' software development now. But they learned programming concepts without going to deep in the weeds of low level stuff. The hard part of game development is making fun gameplay, so rather than focus on rendering, etc., help him make gameplay.
Be careful of your own enthusiasm. His interest may wane and you may need to let go. Just keep that in mind before you make too many plans.
See also https://arcade.makecode.com/
Bonus, you can download it to inexpensive hardware and run it there, such as https://www.adafruit.com/product/4200
"I'm not great on sharing knowledge, and I would dive too deep in complexity."
If you learn to explain tech to a child, you should be able to effectively communicate with most stakeholders. It might be an opportunity for you to upskill together.
Check out https://microstudio.dev/fr/
>microStudio is a free game engine online.
>Create games, learn programming, play, share, prototype and jam!
This book might be of interest: https://nostarch.com/realmofracket.htm
Best of luck!
Make cool stuff with ue5 and the blueprint system for the logic.
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He doesn't care about developing games, he just wants to spend more time with you. Developing games is just the angle he found because you are a developer.
Source: I have been in that exact same spot (same nationality, even). We toyed with Scratch and similar apps for a while, but we eventually switched to just doing more things together and less computer stuff.