As many of you know, on my X profile I usually share packs of assets, courses, and books that I find online at good prices. Some time ago, a pack of Zenva courses appeared on Humble Bundle. Based on what I had read in Reddit forums, I warned in the post that the quality of the courses might not be what people expected. To my surprise, Pablo Farias (@pablofariasnew), founder of Zenva, asked me to give his courses a chance because he didn’t believe they deserved that criticism. So I decided to buy the Humble Bundle pack and take several of the courses to see firsthand whether the impression I had formed from Reddit was accurate or not.
The pack I bought contained a lot of Godot courses. It also had some Unity courses I had purchased a long time ago but hadn’t been able to take. In the end, out of all of them, I completed four courses:
- Tower Defender Game in Godot – Unit 1 – Base Game
- Tower Defender Game in Godot – Unit 2 – Enhanced Towers
- Intro to Visual Shaders in Godot 4
- The Complete Procedural Terrain Generation Unity Course
The first two are just over an hour and a half long, the shader one is barely an hour, while the procedural terrain generation course in Unity spans more than three and a half hours. It’s a sample very similar to what Zenva courses usually are—or at least the ones I’ve obtained in my bundles—generally ranging from one to four or five hours.
To my surprise, I have to say I liked them a lot. All the courses are well structured and cover the scope they promise. They don’t go deep, but what they explain is enough for you to understand what’s going on and practice it confidently in the editor yourself. Even the theoretical concepts, although explained quickly, are conveyed clearly, leaving you with the right idea—perfectly valid for going deeper on your own afterwards.
Of course, they are all in English, but they include subtitles in multiple languages, including Spanish. From what I’ve seen, the Spanish subtitle translation is very good. Even so, I preferred to watch them with English subtitles. The instructors have very clean pronunciation and are easy to understand, so I only used subtitles to check specific words when I got distracted. With subtitles, you’ll have no trouble following the course, no matter your native language. Although it would be great if this platform—and the others that publish courses—started doing what YouTube does and also translated the audio using AI. I don’t know what the production cost is for that, but when you come across one of those, with translated audio, they’re delightful, because the voice even sounds natural.
I tried checking the price of individual courses, but apparently you only have the option to subscribe annually, which gives you access to the entire course catalog. That subscription seems to cost about $59.70 per year. As for whether the price is worth it, I couldn’t really say, because it depends on the value they bring you based on where you are in your learning journey. In my specific case, I’ve already moved past the phase of general introductory courses. I typically go for intermediate courses that cover specific topics. That makes me more selective, so I tend to avoid subscriptions like Zenva’s. But if you’re getting started, it may be a good option to pay that price and have all the courses concentrated and readily available, instead of bouncing around the internet looking for tutorials. You can also do what I did and keep an eye out for the bundles Zenva releases fairly often. That would let you access their content without paying for a subscription you might not get your money’s worth from if you don’t have time to watch courses regularly. If you follow me on X, I’ll let you know when I hear about a new bundle ;-)
To sum up: I liked the Zenva courses. They are good quality. The comments I had read on Reddit are not justified, at least in my opinion. Personally, I’m sure I’ll buy more bundles as they come out. I’m glad I was able to correct my mistake—there aren’t that many quality options to be discarding one incorrectly.
