Best Games to Teach you - HOW TO CODE

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Do you want to learn to code but don't have the willpower? well, these games will teach you how to code, what better way to learn how to code while gamin?
Intro (0:00)
Robocode (0:29)
Codingame (1:18)
CodeMonkey (2:16)
Codecombat (2:58)
Screeps (3:44)
TIS-100 (4:30)
Human Resource Machine (5:17)
Duskers (6:10)
Flexbox Defense (6:55)
Elevator Saga (7:35)
Outro (8:25)
CREDITS
=================
Voice: Mitch
Video Editing by Deface Games: / defacegames

[@oneoranota]

Lee Wars is a turn based combat arena where you develop a team of IA using pseudo code resembling python. It poses both algorithmic and strategical challenges while pushing you to optimize your code to contend with the ressources limits. Pretty cool and there is a very active community of core players.

[@oneoranota]

*Leek Wars

[@MaZEEZaM]

@@oneoranota i looked into Leek Wars, interesting game, unfortunately for me, its not In English. Others might be interested. Btw, if you click the the vertical dots at the end of your comment, you can edit your original comment rather than replying to yourself to clarify.

[@GonzoEnt]

​@@MaZEEZaMJust checked the website after hearing this and it is being displayed to me in English. Might want to check it out again.

[@product2759]

Imagine developing a game, and then, halfway, being like "Screw it, we'll just say it's a programming game."

[@ex0stasis72]

Opus Magnum is the game that got me through my University level computer science "Hardware" course. It's like a visual representation of assembly language to me. While I didn't necessarily learn any practical knowledge about assembly language from Opus Magnum, I did learn to see the "fun" in programming in such a low level language.

[@burntt999]

Ty for your comment

[@orr4337]

If you want to get a better understanding of some somewhat low-level code, I would suggest either "EXAPUNKS" or "SHENZEN I/O"

[@matiasdanieltrapagliamansi3109]

Kudos for the variety !

[@lanaramos7447]

DUSKERS, I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS GAME FOR SO LONG!!! thank you.

[@anthonyoldfield74]

There is also a streamlined version of Screeps called Screeps arena. No persistent world .. just RTS skirmishes. Could be a good entry point if OG Screeps seems too intimidating.

[@tubsucks]

Loved this gonna try out two of them!

[@AmodeusR]

This video was better than I anticipated!

[@Hablo74]

Amazing video! Just know 2 of them! Going play every single one I don't know still! Thx

[@alanredacted]

Wow, good video. Didn't know about a lot of these.

[@HansiKlein]

Damn that's some interesting collection. Thanks!

[@AlexanderBukh]

Awesome list!

[@qaz1617]

Amazing list, 👍🏼

[@zizo-ve8ib]

I don't care what anyone here says, this video got a like the first few minutes, honestly before this video, I had no idea a game teaching programming even exixted, this has opened my eyes on a whole new world

[@whitedragondojo]

TIS-100 was that moment for me years ago. Zachtronics is awesome.

[@disnaut4935]

Bitburner should have been on this list.

[@XHuntinatorX]

Lol… all the complex Robocode bots and the winner was the “drive in circles and shoot”.

[@anorkmedia]

i think robocode looks fun and screeps looks fucking incredible i cant wait to give it a go thanks @GeekNesis for alerting me to the game keep up the good work i just subscribed gonna check out the rest of your channel now.

[@RozzmanLists]

May I add "Autonauts" to your list? I love this game for the way it visualises the effect of your (simple, scratch-like) code. Cute li'l bots execute your scripts slow enough for you to observe and understand the effect of each command line under varying circumstances. And you can play it like a farming game, then slowly offload more and more of the tedious work to the bots as you get more comfortable with coding. The game doesn't teach any classic coding language. Instead, you learn concepts and good practices.

[@Piggeldi0]

Bitburner is missing! This game is super nice for learning Javascript

[@cybermouse8]

Shenzhen I/O is my personal vote, it gives you a sense of working on embedded architecture and includes light mechanics challenges (organizing chips on a limited board space and connecting them efficiently). SpaceChem and Silicon Zeroes get honorable mention. While not specifically coding games, they are also very similar with a context of computer architecture, and teach you how to think in terms of efficient design and visual programming. Silicon Zeroes in particular illustrates how CPU architecture works in a way that is very fun and approachable.

[@guntherbauenheimer8549]

Nice video would like more in this regard i'll directly leave 1 coding game i personally recommend it's called " Hacknet " it's basically a hacking-simulator game in which you're using the terminal to execute UNIX commands on your and different systems. i think there is a mode for entry programmer and a mode for experience programmer which concludes in 2 very different experiences in my opinion (now im gonna check most of the games you just showed, thx a lot)

[@yukitadano5098]

Nice list 👍

[@michaelflores3767]

Man this is good stuff

[@alperen_101]

Bro this video is really perfect

[@skilz8098]

I was gonna say... this list would be incomplete without mentioning anything from Zachtronics. There is another game that's available on Steam that should have a worthy mention, and that's Turing Complete. Not only do you learn to code in the later parts of the game, you actually build your own cpu and design your own ISA - assembly language. Yes, you decide how to design the opcodes as it features not just an assembly compiler-debugger, but an assembly editor. And the later challenges has you using your assembly language to write the needed algorithms to solve them.

[@CR33D404]

Can you tell me it’s name ?

[@skilz8098]

@@CR33D404 I did, it's called Turing Complete.

[@CR33D404]

@@skilz8098 ah ok, thanks, i thought you meant that the game feature a turing complete language or smth 😅

[@skilz8098]

@@CR33D404 It does. The game itself is "Turing Complete". You start out by being introduced to basic logic gates. From there you have to build more complex circuits. Then you get into building decoders, multiplexers, adders, memory units, registers, control logic, then you bring them together and by building an ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit), a basic register file, then you add in both conditional and unconditional branching. After that, they have you connect up a ram module. From there you then have to implement a stack based system in hardware that features push and pop mechanisms. After you have your stack, they then have you implement "call" and "ret" instructions. When you get to the "architecture" levels you have to go into the assembly editor and "add" new instructions. You set each instruction via a binary value where those values depend on either the design of your instruction set, or based on how you wired up and connected all of the components. Then you have to use your assembly language to write basic little programs. In the campaign it's a basic 8-bit system, however once you get past a certain point by completing specific levels, then it unlocks every component for you that then becomes available within the sandbox. Within the Sandbox, there are 16, 32 and 64 bit versions of the basic components as well as a few other things such as a keyboard input, network controller, pixel display, etc... However, there are a handful of them that you can not use within the builds of the campaign challenges to beat them. It's more than just a game about programing. It's Turing Complete! It features both Hardware and Software Engineering Design. Now, it's not 100% pedantic to "real" life circuitry as in Everything propagates on each "Tick" there is no actual pulse of a clock with a falling and rising edge. The game doesn't work that way. Also if you try to build an actual SR Latch or Flip Flop from basic NAND or NOR gates, the game won't allow you because you get an error message about "feedback loops". An input relies on an output. I tried to implement a carry look ahead adder by creating 2 modular components. The modified adder that doesn't produce a carry bit, instead it produces a propagate and generate bit that the look ahead logic will use. I had implemented this perfectly in Logisim and when I used that model in this game. It wouldn't let me due to a feedback loop. Yet, when I built an 8 bit look ahead adder as one single component without breaking it down into modules, it worked fine as there were no feedback loops. The game does have its limitations, but for all tense and purposes it is Turing Complete, hence the name of game! It is turing complete. I was able to build an 8 bit cpu with basic arithmetic and logic instructions, conditional branching, ram addressing, and an actual stackframe. Now don't think what I've done is impressive. I've seen some screenshot builds and a few have built their own within the sandbox and programmed it to run either Mario Brothers, or Tetris although it does take a long time to "render" a single frame. So yeah, the game has a lot of potential, and it's still actively being updated. I did take a break from that game as I got back into playing Oxygen Not Included. I still have Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program on my list...

[@CR33D404]

@@skilz8098 that’s great, i always wanted to build an 8-bit microcontroller from scratch and write Tetris to run on it, this game sounds perfect to me, thanks for the recommandation i will definitely try it

[@thisgamebussin592]

Gracious hellos, GeekNesis fellows. May I suggest for future videos regarding multi-source topics, this video for example, to include the urls as well in the description to help direct us (the viewers) to each product and/or how to find more information related to them. Thank you over all though! Additionally, some uploaded content covers original and commonly looked over topics, it's nice, and I am excited for more to come. I am definitely a new subscriber.

[@EnmanuelKantt]

i needed this... my procrastination is driving me crazy!

[@Dalgor_]

One good addition to these would be Space Engineers, you can play the came without coding at all, but with C# you can make some really cool stuff in the game (automation, different kinds of counters for things etc etc)

[@comatose3788]

I learned how to program long ago but really got into it modding Skyrim for a few years. After that Unity and Unreal were very easy to pick up and so much easier to work with.

[@kmfdm303]

Also 7 Billion Humans, The Farmer Was Replaced, Stationeers's IC Chips require MIPS (an assembly like language), Autonauts, EXA Punks

[@XHuntinatorX]

Here are a few more that are fun… “Mind Rover: Europa Project” and “Colobot”.

[@siddharthjadhav9233]

PART 2 LETS GOOO!

[@Sight-Beyond-Sight]

I think games that teach skills are awesome!! Historical ones are good too (looking at you Total War and Assassin's Creed).

[@WillRaven_]

Thank you.

[@jonathanconnelly6993]

thanks!

[@demigodzero9]

Stationeers, you can learn low level mips assembly to automate systems in your station.

[@yahgamer7369]

acctualy there is a game named stormworks it dont focus on coding but coding is a very important part in the games it has a block based programing and you can even use lua scripts too and it still regularly updated untill today

[@muksithassan3261]

thank you so much i camy to this vedio accidently but i am currently learning javascript to get a job in web development and now i am gona tray this game practice java script

[@sanctumsomega]

Exapunks is a fun one .

[@MegaLokopo]

The farmer was replaced is a fantastic game to learn how to code.

[@alejandroph69]

If I can mention another to the list: Gladiabots imagine you are playing starcraft but micro-controlling battles, with programmed nodes there're different levels as well, and battle styles: elimination, resource and defend, domination area, miscellaneous

[@lionllew6601]

Stationeers only has MIPS but you use it to power devices you install in your station to survive in space, on the moon or one of a few other planets. These devices range from airlock doors to vents to pumps to printers to batteries to robots, rockets and beyond.

[@chaosordeal294]

Duskers is an interesting game, but will teach you absolutely nothing about coding.

[@StudyOnly-um2np]

Then its waste

[@user-cx4qy4ld1v]

They can teach how to use CLI but we have nethack on that XD

[@elokthewizard]

absolutely nothing? what if you’ve never touched a command line interface? doesn’t sound like absolutely nothing

[@elokthewizard]

i know this is a year old but you were negative AND wrong

[@user-cx4qy4ld1v]

@@elokthewizard I do understand what you mean and what he mean at the same time. He's not wrong in a way. CLI surely makes coding easy when you get to deep down(more than a hobby level) but it is not a coding for sure. As same as it is hard to call Nethack as a coding game.

[@onlyme0349]

Greycode is a hacking game that lets you script your hacking tools, it has a self discovered story that requires creative thinking and study and has a multiplayer mode where you can learn from other people. shenzhen IO is a game with levels and challenges that lets you build little electronic devices, it is in a low level language close to assembly and you can compare how fast or how efficient your design was compared to other players, it has a realistic manual as if you would design it in real life, it also has a cool unique solitaire kinda game

[@VincenzoR97]

im genuinely soooo very interested in what it must feel like to be a game dev and be like "yeh... this part of the code? let the freaking player write it" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@cosarara1312]

HAHAHAH best comment

[@ipodgolfer13]

“Outsourcing” lol

[@user-bs4gg8sq7h]

I would add Colobot as a programming game. It is really nice, uses C++ / Java - like language and depicts a story about space exploration, programming robots and fighting aliens. Also it has Ceebot extension - it's a bit more educational version but also very very nice

[@TraceguyRune]

Flexbox Defense has so much potential. It just falls too short

[@michaelmacdonell4834]

I needed this. I'm 64, and annoyed that the world doesn't make sense anymore.

[@maxmuster7003]

I made only a text based mini game for DosBox and the story is very easy to change and it is easy add new character to play. All is made with batch files. Have fun. ❤

[@2Fly4Witeguy]

Ylands dominates all of these because it is a REAL game not just a boring nerd puzzle. Adventure for 100's of hours, but also in the editor you can create any crazy adventure you like. Assemble visual scripting tiles, create terrain, waterfalls, planets, caves, then test the game and upload and let others play it. Buildings, trees, wildlife, pirates, monsters, traps, locked chests, flying submarines, scuba diving, magic wands that do anything you can think of. It's free to play the basic game, but the purchased version allows much more. Look at some of the tutorials for Ylands.

[@rishirajkumar4624]

TIS-100 is seriously a very hard game, as a CSE student i know this, a had a subject COA in which we have to learn and write codes for the 8086 Assembly Program, man that was hard, seeing this here is like a nightmare, i'm glad that semester ended well man.

[@ex0stasis72]

Same here. I'm just glad that my University professor graded on a grade-boosting-only curve for my Hardware course in which we have to write our own disassembler (a program written in assembly language that reads in the compiled binary of assembled programs, and outputs it back into assembly language). I think my group project team scored about a 45% for that project and I still ended up getting a the equivalent of a B in the class.

[@96rnjs]

can you list these from most beginner friendly to experienced?

[@arfainshehzad6832]

from my own personal experience these games are the best if not one of the best way to learn coding!

[@OzOshri]

My recommendation is any minecraft modpack with computercraft tweaked.

[@tshepangletsoalo3413]

Please give us more games like these

[@Mark73]

If you're going to include Human Resource Machine, you definitely should have included Autonauts

[@twilightmoon3782]

I hope Codespell is on this list. :P

[@piggybox]

Flexbox defense is mind blowing

[@torh1]

Looking for a mobile games that like Autonauts.. any recommendations?

[@gradi02]

Brooo Minecraft Commands language is the best :D

[@tartarus216]

Stonestoryrpg encourages you to code a simplified lua to complete quests

[@GrabiBoi13]

Where is Bitburner?

[@WaGi-mr3vs]

u can learn car parts also pc parts from Video games

[@DragonsGaura]

which language is the mostly used? For someone who has never coded or understands it which one would you recommend?

[@tisajokt7676]

JavaScript is a common entry point and pretty accessible, though it could bite you in the butt when transitioning to other languages. Python is similar. C++ is an alternative approach, would be very challenging at first but if you get thru it then you'll have a solid intuition for programming in general.

[@Roberto11231]

CodeCombat!

[@RinksRides]

Duskers was pretty good actually.

[@zg3671]

I wonder what the world would be like if we all knew how to code XD.

[@SHELBY2020]

i have the same problem, it lags extremely, i can barely play it at 12 fps. i uninstalled obs but it doesn't help. could it be that the game is streamed and that's why it lags. i have only 10 mbits internet

[@GGShinobi77]

I'm happy i stumbled upon this video! What a great compilation! I even own most of those games I think and have never even played them (I got them for free). Thank you! Subscribing!

[@reloadfast]

How did you miss Bitburner?

[@jumpsplat120]

Damn, you left hackmud off.

[@KhyrisEidan]

this is something I'd want to get my foot in the door. It's how my brain works to.

[@tommylub]

1./ 'Human Resource Machine' (and next '7 Billion Humans') 2./ 'while True: learn()' 3./ 'Turing Complete'

[@deathdealerhype7819]

I know zero about coding. And i mean nothing i and i want to learn for fun. Are these games helpful to step into it?

[@yt_dt]

GreyHack should be on this list

[@spiritretro3571]

how difficult is it to get screeps world to work on c#? as it runs on javascript by default

[@tisajokt7676]

Support for non-JS languages is mostly community built & driven. I've seen a fair amount of discussion about C# in the Screeps discord lately, so I think it's becoming more viable.

[@Blockchainy]

Is anyone familiar with a game that might teach Powershell scripting or atleast Bash? Great video btw!

[@haziqdarwisy597]

👍👍👍

[@Blueprint4Murder]

Duskes is fun but doesn't really teach you anything other than maybe patience because of the interface.

[@BBoy_PopTart]

Final Fantasy XI will get you deep into C++ Lua

[@user-nv2oh6tv1z]

hey bigbrothers , can anyone tell me what languages should i know before to play these games ??????

[@codeman99-dev]

I played Duskers for a bit. The raw number of bugs that crashed the game was a pretty big turn off. Has that been fixed?

[@GesteromTV]

The best game to learn code is your game. I mean making your own game.

[@ivw1286]

Hello. You have any references?

[@GesteromTV]

@@ivw1286 that depends on your knowlage. Checklist is: programing language(like c#), how to use game engime(like unity), i woude sugest that to start from tutorial that makes copy of some simple game. then proces to change something about that game after you finish that tutorial. When you doing that tutorial you will learn some programing but if you dont know what something means you can search for it in difffrent titorial specofic for that language amd ask chatgpt if you dont know even how to search, chat is bad for that stuf but can help you if have "using System" and you dont know how to ask a question. search in google and ask chat gpt about general concept and not specific staf amd take it with gram of salt.

[@salvatronprime9882]

The implication here is that these teaching games are beginner friendly. Game programming is not.

[@oneoranota]

Game programming can be made incredibly easy, but you need basis in both coding and game design. You start by creating a fun barebone game, and then you add features.

[@mz00956]

Space Engineers has a programmable block

[@freakynintendoguy00]

No 'Quadrilateral Cowboy' :(

[@maxmuster7003]

We need a game where we can find hardware components, a boot disk and a chest with some of the intel developer manuels for x86 CPU. 😊

[@danelendil1424]

No mention of Colobot :(

[@jeremyricha1054]

can someone specifie which of these are for python?

[@infoharvester]

another commenter said codeCombat

[@SystemUpdate310]

You forgot ALAN-13 reformation.

[@nsawatchlistbait289]

Anything for android?

[@yeetgamer1765]

1 more- BitBurner !!!!!!!!!!

[@joebonds3072]

Does anyone know if theses games teach Object Orienting?

[@tisajokt7676]

Programming puzzle games naturally tend towards a procedural (non-OO) programming paradigm, i.e. here's some input and context, now process it into the desired output. Since Screeps is a sandbox and doesn't need to fit into that gameplay loop, it's probably the best option in terms of OO. Also, any of the options which use JS/JS-like syntax would (on a surface level) teach OO.

[@abubakaradam8754]

Man, is there any one of these games that I can play on Android

[@skilz8098]

As for a decent logistics, resource management game that's similar to factorio but different in that it's more of a Defense Tower game, in the mid to later stages it does have cpu and memory components that you can "program" to manage your resources, belts, manufactures, and even your worker and fighting drones... This game is also available on Steam and it's quite good and that's Mindustry.

[@AsmodeusMictian]

That does look like a lot of fun. I've got it wishlisted, thanks!

[@Mtg_edits07]

Is this in phone??? Android

[@hfhhfh6890]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: Made with HARPA AI

[@coderentity2079]

Colobot. How could you miss COLOBOT???

[@stereotypicalreader3568]

Why no minecraft?

[@MDG655]

Coding games I have never heard of