A game that allows players to experience the process of software development can be an excellent way to teach programming concepts and coding like loops and conditional statement. Zachtronics Shenzhen I/O is a game that accomplishes this. It puts players in the shoes angry engineers who work for a drab company and have to build computer chips by hand. The circuits they are asked to design get more difficult, starting with making the lights blink in a specific pattern.

The game’s interface is similar to the one found in browsers, and it teaches scripting. Another great example is Screeps, which incorporates JavaScript programming and massively multiplayer online gameplay to create self-sustaining colonies. Both games do a great job of teaching basic concepts as well as slowly introducing new ones.

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