HACKER Q&A
📣 nassimsoftware

Do you know of good video games that teach programming?


Like actual programming with a programming language not like factorio.


  👤 andersource Accepted Answer ✓
Don't know if it qualifies as a "video game", but I wrote checkerboard-programming[0], a series of puzzles that require you to write js to match checkerboard patterns.

[0] https://www.checkerboardprogramming.com/


👤 ThrowawayR2
What is the age of your audience?

Screeps comes to mind, if JavaScript is okay. Human Resource Machine is lower level but useful for teaching basic concepts.

Good though they are, I would not recommend any of the Zachtronics games since they are focused on being coding puzzles, not teaching.


👤 t-3
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ Unreal Engine is free-ish and it's more fun than most educational games that I've seen.

👤 stellartux
TwilioQuest is quite good. It teaches JavaScript and Python, including setting up the runtimes and some basic git stuff.

https://www.twilio.com/quest


👤 perilunar
Swift Playgrounds is pretty cool.

https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/


👤 dtagames
Microsoft MakeCode Arcade is great for learning to code with games.

https://arcade.makecode.com


👤 gabrielsroka
This one uses JavaScript http://play.elevatorsaga.com

👤 high_byte
LightBot is cute There's a cool one called "GATE" where you program a bot using only logical gates, hope you can find that one