Do you know any games where the core game mechanic is about programming? Things like Zachtronics games, factorio or https://robotopia-x.github.io/

Quadrilateral Cowboy, Human Resource Machine… HyperCard :p

Related • lightbot • Zoombinis (series) • Incredible machine (series - Rube Goldberg machines)

I would also add: Roblox, Minecraft, Dreams, and other creative sandbox games with programable components. MockMechanics (arguably a game) StarEdit, or other level-editors that ship with a game.

On a meta note, this question made me think about what elements of game design are “enough” to qualify as programming eg • opportunity for emergent behavior? (Conway) • ability to manage state / control flow? • System simulations (city / tycoon) - you achieve goals by modifying the environment rather than the agents • Has elements that can be optimized or automated • No single path to “win”, but some are quantitatively better than others

Pixel Starships has a rule-based AI engine that I think is pretty cool. You create a bunch of these rules for each crew member and give them an ordering. The highest-precedence rule whose condition is currently fulfilled is the one the crew member will take.

Oh gosh yes so many. I’m not able to reply properly at the moment but I will be back when I can get at my steam library and bookmarks! I worked on a now defunct programming education game (TwilioQuest) and myself and another dev used to stream gameplay and interviews with programming game devs, there’s still some of the vods kicking around at https://www.twitch.tv/twilioquest/videos, including a chat with Zach of Zachtronics https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1454395489 (Where incidentally, he surprised announced the closure of Zachtronics as an aside to an unrelated topic in a way that gave me a heart attack live)

Oh there's also this, which feels a bit different from most of the other games listed here: https://spacetraders.io/ A game that you can only play by doing programming in a real programming language.

for some multi-core concurrent assembly as a "game". https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/

If anyone here is seeing TIS-100 for the first time, definitely also check out Shenzhen I/O, Exapunks, and Lastcall BBS, also by Zachtronics. Lastcall BBS, a collection of ideas that weren’t big enough for full games in their own right but still absolute bangers, has a game that I think a lot of people here will get a kick out of, called “X’BPGH: The Forbidden Path”, which is kind of a cellular automata programming game where the rules of the automata are obscured by the eldritch horror dressings of the whole thing

Thinking about Cameron's meta note on what constitutes a game whose core mechanic is programming, do we consider Baba is You to be programming?

@Jeffrey Tao yes, but it can be more subtle than that

kinda sorta SineRider (graphing equations is the core mechanic): https://sinerider.com/

Aw and it’s a hack club project! That’s great

Ooh, I just realized Baba is You doesn't need Steam: https://hempuli.itch.io/baba 🏃🏼 🙊 💰

(For games that aren't on itch, I'd also suggest checking Humble and GoG, which offer downloads via the web)

https://ellraiser.itch.io/synthesis is I think something that doesn't look like programming, but seems to me like programming in a deep way. Seems similar to SineRider in that respect (which I ❤️, but man it gets difficult quickly. Somebody should graph the learning curve of SineRider within SineRider 😄) I also want to mention some of the oldest generation of programming "games": Core War, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_(computer_simulation), more recently Halite which I now see is sadly defunct. https://github.com/ryanb/ruby-warrior is a neat minimalist gateway drug to this sort of thing. But yes, this whole category is from my younger, text-supremacist days.

If we're going old-school, we can't overlook Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey. Since I'm pasting links from Wikipedia, might as well include Category: Programming Games

Expected to see The Last Clockwinder in this thread . Instead of conveyor belts we have tossed fruit salad. Comes pretty close to being programming proper, just need to be able to toss robots.

That’s a great shout, I played through that recently. Best use of VR in a game I’ve ever experienced

Care to elaborate @Joe Nash? What made The Last Clockwinder stand out, and in comparison to what? For example, I think I've been most impressed by Virtual Virtual Reality, but I wouldn't say I've toured much that's on offer.

I haven’t seen Virtual Virtual Reality, I’ll check it out! I think one of the things I was most impressed about with TLC was just the elegance of the core gameplay mechanic…it’s such an “obvious” use of the high fidelity player actions you get from VR controllers, it just really impressed me. VR games tend to feel like tech demos a lot of the time so TLC was nice in that it felt like a complete game/experience, as well

As a child of the '80s, VR games feel a lot like games did then.