Battlezone '98: One of the first notable RTS/FPS hybrids. You drive hovertanks and you build bases and you command other tanks. Set in a secret live war on the Moon, Mars, and Venus between the USSR and the USA during the cold war.
It's a zachtronics-like, but in a side-scroller? I like coding games but am not sure the combination works just like that. Personally, I'd expect the coding to be relevant to the world, not an unrelated theoretical exercise. Project Euler randomly tacked onto Mario would be a nope for me, but using coding as a meaningful part of the game, so it does visible, tangible, useful or just cool things? Sign me the fuck up.
If you haven't tried playing Zachtronics games, I'd give them a try. They're a major subniche of "coding games" and could be good for some inspiration. They're all basically coding either in spirit (SpaceChem, Magnum Opus) or directly (TIS-100, Shenzhen IO, Exapunks...), usually with some twist. Their languages tend to be "fake assembly", simplified and stylized.
Personally I've rarely had as much fun coding as in my early ComputerCraft days (computers/robots in Minecraft) because it... did stuff. I was already a coder, but was not used to seeing it translated into "physical" actions. Like the difference of learning/teaching Python with text-based UIs and exercises, vs a "robot" that drives around in the room and does things.
I've had some ideas along these lines myself, borrowing a lot of Zachlike inspiration, but I was going to go topdown or just omit the "overworld" entirely.
+1 for computercraft. It was super satisfying getting them to do even trivial things, but a huge reward when you pushed them beyond that.
Though I did find, in order to retain sanity, that I had to remote into the minecraft server and use an IDE rather than the somewhat awful experience of writing lua in game without any IDE tools.
Persona - a turn based Pokémon-like RPG fused with a social simulator. Your main way of getting stronger isn't by simply levelling up (although it helps) but by fusing multiple monsters that you catch and spending your limited time available with comrades.
I have a HTPC setup for steam gaming using Micro OS. I haven’t touched it in a few months, but for the earlier parts of this year I frequently played Dead Cells, Art of Rally, Bloodstained, Vampire Survivor, Stardew Valley, games like that.
I used a couple of PS4 controllers via Bluetooth, just using the touchpad on the controller for if I needed to use a mouse cursor on the desktop or something.
One gripe was that I couldn’t get MicroOS to auto login, so I had to keep a keyboard next to the tv so I could sign in everything I wanted to play a game.
I am not sure if it qualifies but Paradise Killer is pretty unique all-around. It may seem walking-simulator-ish but the presentation and the overall game-design are definitely a stand out. You’re trying to solve a murder mystery and it’s completely up to you as the player to decide when you’ve gathered enough information to make a conviction. There is practically no hand-holding either which is quite rare for a mystery solving/detective game. I know it might not exactly be what OP asked for but I think the game is worth being recommended more.
There is really something very different about this game. If you point to any individual part of it, there are other games that do that thing. But all together, it’s quite unique. And it’s a pretty fun game.
The World Ends With You (DS): Asymmetric action RPG where your left hand and right hand are playing different games in parallel, which is deeply connected to the game’s themes of individual experience and semiotics. The switch remake unfortunately ditches the core gameplay to make it more widely accessible but the original game is worth getting into.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Play the game on story mode and enjoy it. That trilogy has the best characters and some of the best quest storylines in the industry in my opinion.
I think there's something like it someone suggested to me once, but something like an RTS where you code up your units with different behaviors seems to me like something that could be fun for novices and more experienced coders alike if done correctly. You probably wouldn't want to support a full coding language, but taking something like Python or another scripting language that supports objects and providing a small set of legal commands to include in your unit code would be interesting to me. If the base was a campaign that encouraged creative problem solving to use your hand coded unit behavior, and you added a simple way for players to share code with each other, pit their unassisted bots against each other, and maybe even added the ability to write/pin commands to change behavior patterns for an actual real time head to head, I might play the hell out of it.
I also might play for 5 minutes and never touch it again though.
That's probably the one I've seen before. It definitely does look like it has potential.
My biggest issue is actually finding the time to really dive into it among all the other stuff I want to play. I could see absolutely getting into a black hole with it some time I start though.
Thanks for helping me find that to at least put on my wishlist. For now between BG3 and Starfield I don't need another giant time sink, but I'll definitely keep it in mind when I'm looking for something different.
i don’t know too much about jellyfin compatibility, but your issue is probably ASS/SSA format subtitles, which are a complex graphical overlay subtitle, rather than simple text so device support is less guaranteed.
You could try pre-burning the subtitles in before hand by re-encoding the video, or find content with SRT subtitles which have wider support.
ASS on android clients is mostly a solved issue these days so as the other commenter suggests, the google TV chromecast with a native jellyfin app would be a more reliable solution for you.
A few that stick out to me, mostly because I've played them and they're pretty good, are Human Resource Machine, While True: Learn(), Opus Magnum, and Shenzhen I/O. I would say Bitburner too but that's more-so literally programming.
I think your idea is interesting, but based on the examples I've listed, which I must admit is not a huge sample, most of them are played in a sort of GUI experience sort of way. I think it would be very, very difficult to translate the core concepts of programming to a side scroller.
However, as I said, I think it's a really cool idea, just thought I'd point out some similar games in case you had never heard of them.
I think your idea is interesting, but based on the examples I’ve listed, which I must admit is not a huge sample, most of them are played in a sort of GUI experience sort of way. I think it would be very, very difficult to translate the core concepts of programming to a side scroller.
Unfortunately, I haven’t played any of these games, but I have scrolled through that category myself to see what’s out there. I agree with you, that a side scroller is probably not the best option to introduce programming concepts from a game-mechanic perspective. I think didn’t really communicate well, that the way I envision my game differs a bit from these approaches. I don’t actually want to focus on specialized in-game mechanics that help to visualize algorithms or programming concepts. Instead, the game is meant to be a very mechanically trivial, story focussed frontend, that makes achieving the programming tasks more exciting.
You could maybe make some kind of a lemmings style game where functions change the behaviour of the creatures in order to achieve some kind arbitrary of goal. Like arranging their colours based on the rainbow, or something to that effect. The creatures would be a stand in for data, and the things the players can do manipulate the data to achieve a specific outcome. Is that more what you were thinking?
Paper Mario. I actually have the original game and the N64 to play it, but play on the switch instead. I really enjoy it. I also tried Palia on PC, but it doesn’t feel right.
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