A game that lets players to play with software development is an excellent method to teach programming concepts and coding, such as loops and conditional statements. Games that allow this include Zachtronics’ Shenzhen I/O, which puts players in the shoes of disaffected engineers who work for an ordinary chip manufacturer and must design computer chips by hand. The circuits they are asked to design are more complex beginning with making lights flash in a certain pattern.
The interface of the game looks very similar to the tools for developers found in browsers and also teaches scripting. Screeps is a great example, which combines JavaScript code with massively multiplayer online games in order to create self-sustaining colonies. Both games excel at teaching basic concepts and slowly introducing new players.
