Bananas Academy’s Psyber
I saw the trailer for this and was intrigued at the idea of teaching someone the fundamentals of programming while being a puzzle based 2D platformer game. Played it for 1 hour and let my 12yo niece play it afterwards. She finished all the 4 chapters (4 chapters available in the game as of writing this review) and she wanted more. I was fascinated how the game kept her engaged and had her attention throughout. Being an Indie developer myself I want to support up and coming developers. I can see how good concepts like these shouldn’t be compared to titles from established developers. Truly nice work and idea on the part of this developer for bringing this concept into fruition. Looking forward to the future expansive updates or possibly new titles on this concept soon.
– Real player with 3.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Education Precision Platformer Games.
Okay, so first of all I’d like to start with what I liked in the product.
1. This is a very cool concept of teaching programming. I am a competitive programmer myself I regularly
attend monthly challenges in websites like Codeforces and Codechef. I remember how I struggled to learn the fundamentals of programming as none of my school text books had a proper exposure to build a base towards coding.
2. Game is buttery smooth even in my Intel HD 5500.
Here’s what I saw in the product which I feel needs more attention
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
Code Romantic
I am a rank amateur as far as coding goes, so I was excited about the promises this game made at the outset. I didn’t realize it, but I was prepared by previous experiences for there to be a somewhat solid logic problem element, and then a story that was written around the puzzles that, in the end, I probably could have done without.
Code Romantic is not that game! My expectations were blown away and I had a beautiful experience that I think is pretty uncommon: The puzzles served the story, which served the puzzles. I did not prefer one aspect of the game over the other, and in fact they are inextricably linked. So often, I go into games looking to enjoy some puzzles and practically disregard the writing. This game actually made me cry a couple of times.
– Real player with 76.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Education Female Protagonist Games.
Disclaimer: I purchased the demo of this game on itch.io but was later asked to test the the final product so my experience was a mix of paid/ free.
Basically this game comes down to - do you want to fall in love while learning to code? For someone like me, who loves romance but also tech and is trying to learn how to code in C### but intimidated- this game is a godsend. No one is creating stuff like this; it is one of a kind. I got to learn to code and read code in the context of a heroic thrilling love story. It is a great mix of challenging with user action and rewarding with story. This game is super fun and fresh. The art and music is fantastic. The story and characters had me swooning, smiling, laughing and gasping like I was a teenager again with a mission, a crush and a bunch of friends and foes.
– Real player with 11.5 hrs in game
Cyborg Earthworm
Cyborg Earthworm is a “Snake” automation game. The worm follows the rules of the famous Snake game, and you can program it. Develop a strategy and let the worm follow it without your involvement.
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Solve and optimize 20+ areas, each of which contains a virtually unlimited number of procedurally generated levels.
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Watch the worm dominate the levels automatically without having to pilot it.
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Reach the maximum possible length, filling all free space.
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Use a variety of tools like paint spray for leaving marks in the soil and internal worm memory for tracking things.
SEN: Seven Eight Nine
another would-be-great game ruined by thinking players have all the time (and willingness) in the world to replay half the puzzles to get back to the point where they stopped (or had to stop) last time. if your trailer says 100+ puzzles, let me select them individually, not just 21 packs of 6 or so that have to be done in one go. or at the very least save my progress on the current level so I can continue there next time and/or try another unlocked level in the meantime. the game wouldn’t be any easier, only less tedious and frustrating.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
This is a different type of puzzle game where you have to intuitively learn the rules through playing. I’ve not played anything like this before, but it is kind of a mix of sudoku and path games. Very intriguing and it can get quite difficult. I spent almost 2 hours trying to find the solution to the last puzzle (which I did -YAY!) and just a few seconds on some of the earlier puzzles. The concept seems simple at first, but it gets more complex as you move to higher levels. I couldn’t really describe the rules to you, but I know what they are intuitively, LOL.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
Software Engineering Course / Informatyka - zrozum i zaprogramuj komputer
Software Engineering Course
The program was created on the basis of an engineering study program. No prior knowledge of any IT issues is required - we start with simple tasks and step by step learn the basics of computer programming.
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Lesson 1: Basic Logic - You learn the basic logical operations.
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Lesson 2: Gates And & Or - You build a machine controlled by electronic gates.
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Lesson 3: Exercises with Gates - You learn about more complex integrated circuits.
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Lesson 4: Binary Numbers
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Lesson 5: Single-bit Processor - You write the first programs - lighting the lights in the machine.
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Lesson 6: Programming Microprocessor - Assembler - This is the first difficult, complex lesson: you write assembler programs in machine language. You’ll see how the processor executes the commands, how the data is kept in memory, you will learn the basic instructions of the processor.
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Lesson 7: C Programming Language - You write simple programs and see how high-level programs are translated into the language of the processor instructions.
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Lesson 8: Objective Programming Basics - You program a robot that has to traverse the board with traps.
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Lesson 9: Computer Graphics Basics - You learn how images are stored, write pixel drawing programs, simple charts, test colors, and compress the image.
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Lesson 10: Hardware - Just a basic information.
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Lesson 11: Linux Operating System - You learn the basic shell commands, combine them into simple scripts.
Super Markup Man
A nice, cheap game with 50 levels of HTML, and 50 levels of HTML & CSS. It doesn’t so much as teach you about HTML and CSS, but it definitely helps with making your code cleaner and giving your mind lots of practice to get into the habit of putting code in the right place.
If the average person were to go into this game with zero coding knowledge, I think they would struggle as the game fails to explain what each tag even does. Although it’s easy enough to figure out if you like to experiment.
– Real player with 7.1 hrs in game
It’s good, but you could learn so much quickly if you could arrange the labels with the mouse. Moving the character is fun for 5 minutes, after that it’s not really convenient.
Having completed some other free tutorials, what I appreciated about this game was the pace. You can really learn step by step and understand subtle differences. The way levels are built force you to take the time to practice simple concepts and prevents you to “jump” too soon to something too advanced for you.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Kooring VR Coding Adventure
Challenge if you think your brain is smart
If you clear Episode 3, you will likely be scouting from NASA.
Challenge the universal genius!
– Real player with 15.5 hrs in game
I like the idea of the command blocks: you don’t write a code, but learn how it works. It didn’t have to be a VR game, by the way. I would love to play on PC or mobile. Overall, this is a great VR puzzle game.
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
Turing Complete
Fantastic Game. It scratches an itch I didn’t even realize I had. This contains the essence of a university level introduction to Computer Hardware course, disguised as a game. In fact, it surpasses it in some ways. I never actually did get to build an entire functional computer in University, but you do here. In university we built some circuits, and had to use our imagination how it would fit into a complete architecture, and then jumped to learning to program the already existing Motorola 68K. In this “game”, not only do you build a fully functional computer (vitually, of course), but you also design the instruction set and assembly language that goes with it. And once you’re done with the in-game challengese, you still have the sandbox and all the components to do something on your own… like build an actual Motorola 68K.
– Real player with 180.1 hrs in game
I’ve been a professional software developer for almost a decade, and I’ve never been more proud of anything I’ve ever built than when I wrote a program to solve a maze in an assembly language that I encoded on a computer I built from scratch in this game. I feel like for the first time I REALLY understand how a computer works, and it is incredibly gratifying.
I’ve been playing games like Factorio, Infinifactor, Shinzen I/O, TIS-100, Astroneer. Minecraft, “While True: Learn()”, etc., but it turns out that this is the itch I was trying to scratch the whole time. And in the sense of scratching that itch, this is the best game I’ve ever played.
– Real player with 100.3 hrs in game
while True: learn()
After finishing the whole game, despite of my strong objections that I’ve written about in my original review (below), I’ve decided to change my review into thumbs up.
It took me some time to analyze my thoughts, and while I still have strong objections about inconsistency of various gameplay mechanics, the game truly has a charm, is well done and doesn’t deserve negative review, even if as a programmer purely analyzing the consistency of the gameplay I’d rate it negatively without a second thought.
– Real player with 30.3 hrs in game
Let me start off by saying that I actually really enjoyed playing the game. The challenges are fun to solve and while they generally were not very difficult, I often found myself going back to old exercises and solving them in different ways.
Nevertheless, with the current state of the game, I cannot recommend it since there are just too many flaws that I cannot overlook even for an early access title.
Many of these are easily fixable,which is why I will go over the major problems one by one so that the developer(s) can consider my feedback.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Bamboo Forest
Bambo Forest
Send your Panda on an adventure and at the same time you’ll learn how to code cool algorithms!
Learn programming / STEM concepts like recursion and loops while having fun. But beware! Don’t get caught while eating bamboo!
Guide your Panda through colorful areas by using simple commands.
The Goal
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Reach the end of the levels
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Eat all the bamboo
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Avoid getting caught by the enemies
The Gameplay
Make a combination of instructions by dragging and dropping them to the programming areas.
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Forward
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Backward
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Turn Right
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Turn Left
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Wait
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Function
Press Play To let the Panda execute these commands in order from top to bottom. After each command your enemies get to walk too!