rg-software/board-games

Board games for teaching introductory programming

Simple Board Games

This is a collection of simple board games implemented in Python with Pygame Zero. These games are selected as possible exercises for entry-level programming education. More details about the criteria for inclusion and other considerations can be found in this paper.

In a nutshell:

• If you are teaching programming, use game rules as a basis for your exercises, and check out the provided code to assess exercise difficulty. The "Core LOC" value provides a good quick estimation.

• If you are studying programming, read game rules and try to implement the game alone or with a friend. Don't read the existing code unless you have finished your solution or absolutely need a hint.

The code provided is supposed to be simple and straightforward, resembling a "good enough" exercise solution: there are neither strong fool-proof mechanisms, nor polished GUIs. The main purpose of these examples is to demonstrate the complexity of a particular game from the software developer's perspective.

Each game comes with a text interface, a graphical interface, and a small number of pytest-powered unit tests.

Further Ideas

Once your task is done, you can try making it more challenging:

• Implement a 3+ player version of the game (where applicable).

• Make it possible to save and restore game sessions.

• Implement a remote (network) play capability.

• Implement a game AI system.

Setup

Install Poetry, then run

poetry install

to install dependencies. Check the pages of individual games for more information.

Current Games

All games in the table satisfy certain criteria. They are at least mildly interesting (have BoardGameGeek rating of 5.0 and above), they are quick to play (at most 15 min), have simple rules, and, in principle, designed for a two-player hotseat mode. Thus, there are no hidden cards and other information assumed to be private. None of the games require preparing extensive assests (cards, tiles, maps) or presume natural language proficiency, which makes them suitable for international groups.

Very occasional deviations from the "two-player" criterion include solo games, 3-player games, and games where one of the players can be easily replaced with an algorithm. In the latter case hidden information is allowed, since there is only one human player involved.

The "Core LOC" column in the games table shows the size of code shared between the CLI and the GUI versions of the game. In most cases, making GUI requires considerably more skills and effort, even with an easy-to-use framework. The "GUI value" evaluates the playability of the game without GUI. If it is low, a text-based interface is not painful to use.

Name	BGG Rating	Core LOC	GUI value	Players	Category	Topics
Pig	5.3	25	Low	2	Dice	Basics
Mastermind	5.6	25	Low	1-2	Deduction	Basics, Arrays
GOLO (basic)	5.6	25	Low	1+	Dice	Basics, Arrays
Kalah	5.9	50	Low	2	Abstract	Arrays
Stop-Gate	6.1	50	High	2	Abstract	2D Arrays
No Thanks!	7.1	50	Low	3-7	Cards	Arrays, Algorithms
Othello	6.1	50	High	2	Abstract	2D Arrays, Algorithms+
Impact	6.7	50	Low	2-5	Dice	Arrays, Algorithms
Gold Fever	6.4	50	Low	2-5	Cards	Basics, Arrays
GOLO (scorecard)	5.6	50	Low	1+	Dice	Arrays, Algorithms
Ship, Captain, and Crew	5.1	50	Low	2+	Dice	Arrays, Algorithms
Quixo	6.2	50	High	2	Abstract	2D Arrays, Algorithms
Poker dice	5.1	100	Low	2+	Dice	Arrays, Algorithms
Paletto	6.7	100	High	2-3	Abstract	Graphs, Algorithms+
Black Box	6.4	100	Low	1-2	Deduction	2D Arrays, Algorithms+
Criss Cross	6.4	100	High	1+	Dice	2D Arrays, Algorithms
King's Valley	6.5	100	High	2	Abstract	2D Arrays, Algorithms
Farmers Finances	6.3	150	Low	2	Economic	Basics
Orchard	7.4	150	High	1	Cards	2D Arrays, Algorithms+
Blokus Duo	6.8	200	High	2	Abstract	2D Arrays, Algorithms+
Push Fight	7.4	200	High	2	Abstract	2D Arrays, Graphs

Third-party Contributions

DejaVu fonts, Noto emoji fonts, Playing cards.