"This game teaches you the hardest parts of computer science in the coolest way possible" can be read in the store description of Squally, a game for Linux, Windows and macOS currently in Early Access on Steam and Itch.io, priced at $25. Quite a lofty goal! :)
Low level programming in assembly is a useful trick to know, even if you program in higher level languages like C/C++ or even higher level languages like Python. Since assembly is so extremely close to machine code, just putting more readable syntax on top of it, using hex notation instead of binary, and adding a few helpful programming constructs, it can be hard to learn. Not because it is hard, but because you need to write a lot of code before you see something interesting happen, so a game that teaches it and shows you something on the screen even with little code is really cool.
The Minecraft creator Markus Persson, also known as Notch, worked on something in that area as well, a game called 0x10c, where you could program a fantasy computer with assembly code in a science fiction space setting. Sadly, Notch gave up on that idea quickly, even though he had already published a working spec of the virtual CPU called DCPU-16. Fans have made multiple implementations of this virtual CPU and written lots of small apps for it, but the actual game 0x10c never came out.
There are a lot of other programming games, for example Colobot, else Heart.Break() and Hack 'n' Slash, but those all feature higher level programming, not the low level machine code programming that you don't need to know today but that will still help you debug and give you a deeper understanding of how computers and software works. I've never spent much time learning and working with assembly so this is of special interest to me, it's something where my knowledge as a programmer is still lacking.
Squally teaches you this low level programming with different mini games that start with a card game that visually resembles the Witcher card game GWENT a bit, but where the cards are binary operations to teach you binary and hex notation.
Right now this is the only part of the game that is available when you purchase the Early Access version, but the video trailer shows the more interesting parts where actual assembly code is written to modify the game and allow your character to pass obstacles:
There will also be a tower defense minigame that lets you rewrite the code of the towers with assembly to improve them. And there will be an RPG part that is inspired by games like "Child of Light", with JRPG combat and x86 assembly puzzles according to this announcement on Steam.
The game is intended for ages 12 and up, for adults there is going to be more challenging side content in addition to the main game.
The game was published on Itch.io 30 days ago and the developer recommends to wait a couple of months before you buy if you don't want to deal with Early Acess, which I would also recommend. The game has great potential, but right now there just isn't much there, so buying it would be a giant leap of faith I cannot recommend. But keep an eye on it for sure if the topic is interesting to you, I will :)
There is also a demo available that you can download for Windows, macOS and Linux, which lets you play the card game that teaches binary and hex.
And it was posted to Hacker News where you can find a few more comments from developers.
You should hunt this game on Steemhunt.com. Thanks for sharing.
Hadn't heard of Steemhunt before, thanks for the link, I'll check it out! :)
Here is discord link for Steemhunt https://discord.gg/mWXpgks
we love coding
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