I Need Practice Programming 4. Ideas for Game Clones to Code. So you know a little bit about programming perhaps youve read the free book, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, a free programming book for beginners whose author shamelessly plugs at every chance but you want to get better at coding. You cant seem to find any open source projects that are at your level or easy for new people to contribute to. Youve gone through a few of the practice problems at Project Euler but you want to create something more substantial, or at least a cool thing you can show your friends. Not that finding the 3. Heres a list of game clone ideas for you to implement. Each has a short description of the game, links to videos of the game, and descriptions of what kind of algorithms youll need to know in order to implement them. These games have been selected for their simplicity, so you dont have to spend several weeks designing art, levels, scripted dialogue, or complicated AI. These are clones designed to be doable in roughly a weekend. A Mario or Zelda clone would be complicated to put together, but a Tetris or Asteroids clone would be doable in a weekend. Original Question I am currently engaged in teaching my brother to program. He is a total beginner, but very smart. And he actually wants to learn. Ive noticed. Youve got problems, Ive got advice. This advice isnt sugarcoatedin fact, its sugarfree, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love. Orisinal Games The Orisinal website has a great collection of Flash games with very simple mechanics that can be copied. I especially recommend Winter Bells, A Daily Cup of Tea, Bugs, and Hold the Rope The Wikipedia entry for video game clones also lists some ideas. UPDATE If youd like to make some more advanced games, I highly recommend you watch the talk Juice it or lose it a talk by Martin Jonasson Petri Purho on some simple tweaks and tricks that turn a simple pong game into a really polished looking pong game. Games from Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python and Making Games with Python Pygame books These games are described in these free Python programming books and their source code is available. However, you can make your own variants. Dodger. Description Several bad guys fall from the top of the screen, and the user must avoid them. The player can be controlled with the arrow keys or more directly with the mouse. The longer the player lasts without being hit, the higher the score. Variations Have enemies fall at different rates and be different sizes. Have enemies fall from more than one side of the game. Have power up pickups that grant invulnerability for a while, slow down bad guys, give the player a temporary reverse bad guys power, etc. This game is covered in Chapter 2. Invent with PythonDownload Source dodger. Memory Puzzle. Description A board full of overturned cards. There is a pair for each card. The player flips over two cards. If they match, then they stay overturned. This course will provide a gentle, yet intense, introduction to programming using Python for highly motivated students with little or no prior experience in programming. Otherwise they flip back. The player needs to overturn all the cards in the fewest moves to win. Variations Provide hints in the form of four possible matching cards after the player flips the first one. Or, quickly overturn groups of cards at the beginning of the game. This game is covered in Chapter 1 of Making Games with Python PygameDownload Python Source memorypuzzle. Sliding Puzzle. Description A 4x. P76rnjmdIdU/hqdefault.jpg' alt='How To Make A Tetris Game In Python' title='How To Make A Tetris Game In Python' />Windows 3 Games Download 16bit Games for Windows 3. Windows 3. 1 and Windows For Workgroups for Windows 3. This section provides the homework assignments and projects for the course along with handouts and supporting files. A Guided Tour of Emacs. The GNU Emacs Manual calls Emacs the extensible, customizable, selfdocumenting realtime display editor, but this description tells beginners. How To Make A Tetris Game In Python' title='How To Make A Tetris Game In Python' />To win the game, the player must slide tiles over to put the tiles back in order. Variants Instead of numbers, you can have a scrambled picture cut up into 4x. This game is covered in Chapter 4 of Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Python Source slidepuzzle. Simon. Description Four colored buttons light up in a specific pattern. After displaying the pattern, the player must repeat the pattern by clicking the buttons in proper order. The pattern gets longer each time the player completes the pattern. If the player presses a wrong button, the game ends. Variant A nine button version can add challenge to this game but more than that would probably just be tedious. This game is covered in Chapter 5 of Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Pyhton Source simulate. Nibbles. Description A worm or snake constantly moves around the board. The player controls the direction the head of the worm moves, and the worm must try to eat apples that randomly appear. Eating an apply causes the worm to grow in length. The game ends if the worm crashes into the edge of the board or into itself. Defend Your Cabin Hacked Cheats Games. Variants Add walls to the level, instead of just a blank rectangle. Add power ups that the worm can pick up. Add bad guys that move around the board that the worm must avoid. Have two worms that the player must control simultaenously. Tron see below is a two player variant of this game. This game is covered in Chapter 6 of Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Python Source wormy. Tetris. Description Shapes made up of four blocks fall from the top of the board. The player must rotate and place them to create full rows with no gaps. When a full row is made, the blocks in that row disappear and the blocks above it move down. The game ends if the board fills up. Variant Several Tetris variants are listed on Wikipedia. ListofTetrisvariants. This game is covered in Chapter 7 of Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Python Source tetromino. Katamari Damacy. Description The original Katamari Damacy game was in a 3d world, but a 2d version is also easy to implement. The player controls a small object in a world of different sized objects. Touching the smaller objects grows the player, touching the larger objects damages or shrinks the player. The player wins when they reach a certain size. A flash version of 2. D Katamari is available. This game is covered in Chapter 8 of Making Games with Python PygameDownload Source squirrel. Sokoban. Description The player is in a level with objects that need to be pushed over goals. The objects can only be pushed, they cant be pulled. This game does require some effort to design levels for, but Sokoban levels have been designed by others and published on the web. Variant Add all sorts of level gimmicks teleport tiles, conveyor belts, buttons that open doorsbridges, buttons that need an object left on them to keep a door open. This game is covered in Chapter 9 of Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Source starpusher. Othello. Description On a grid, a black and white player places tiles of their color on the board. The opponents tiles between the newly placed tile and that players existing tiles are flipped to become the color of the players tiles. The game ends when the board fills up and the player with the most tiles of their color wins. Variant Three player Othello with three different colors. Non square boards. This game is covered in Chapter 1. Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Source flippy. Flood It. Description A grid of six colors of tiles starts off randomly. The player can do a flood fill on the top left tile, changing the color of any adjacent tiles of thesame color. The player wins if they are able to make the entire board a single color within a certain number of moves. Variants Power ups gained when a certain tile is changed. This game is covered in Chapter 1. Making Games with Python Pygame. Download Source inkspill. Connect Four. Description Two players of different colors drop their tokens on an upright board. The player to make four tokens in a row, column, or diagonal wins. Creating an AI for this requires a simple minimax algorithm. Variant Different board sizes. Walls inside the board that appear when the spaces beneath them are filled. This game is covered in Chapter 1. Making Games with Python Pygame.