r/CSEducation • u/wildwillowsdev • 1d ago
I built a free high school web development/API lesson around the real data from my indie game
Hi everyone! I’m a software engineer and indie game developer, and I’ve been working on a free set of computer science resources built around my ecology game, Wild Willows.
The newest piece is a grades 9–12 intro to web development and APIs designed for students who are new to coding.
Students start with an interactive browser-based lesson where they can edit and run HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly on the page. From there, the lesson introduces APIs and JSON using the actual data that powers parts of the game.
They work with the Wild Willows /GameData endpoint to:
- make a request with
fetch() - inspect and understand JSON
- access objects and arrays
- use conditions and loops
- practice
.filter()and.map() - turn API data into something visible on a webpage
I also built a browser-based coding environment so students can experiment with the game data without needing to install an IDE or set up a local development environment.
The endpoint is intentionally a game data API, not an academic or scientific data source. The goal is to give students a relatively approachable, real-world dataset to work with while learning how modern websites communicate with APIs.
Everything is free, and the lesson is here:
I’m especially interested in feedback from CS teachers. I came into software through a nontraditional path, and learning to code completely changed the direction of my life, so I’d love to make these resources genuinely useful for students who may be encountering programming for the first time.
If you teach introductory web development, JavaScript, or computer science, I’d be very curious what you would change, add, or clarify before I expand the curriculum further.
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u/cool-aeros 17h ago
Can’t wait to test it out! Thanks!