Show HN: Variables War, a kid-friendly code playing-cards game | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Variables War, a kid-friendly code playing-cards game

github.com

78 pointserwanalliaume26 comments

This game is free to play, cards could be printed from the github page.

The goal is to be the first to reach 42 for either of your 2 variables. For that, you will have to create a program that gets them closer to 42. Different kind of cards will help you to achieve that, if you are lucky enough: values and loop cards will help you increment your variable value. All the other cards will be used to slow down your opponents or defend yourself from a previous attack.

Some of the cards: code freeze, legacy code, pair programming, mob programming, memory leak, rollback, refactoring.

Graphic design feedback:

- don't use just color to separate card types. Include an icon.

- make it obvious which text is the effect and which is the flavor text.

I don't understand the "Condition" cards: "Forbids any card that is breaking this condition. If the condition is already broken, then forbids any card that is not going towards its resolution." I don't know what it means to "forbid" a card. The word appear nowhere else in the card descriptions or game rules. Some (non-trivial) examples are probably called for; it seems like one of the more powerful and complicated cards.

(Note my problem isn't an inability to come up with a plausible interpretation, it's that I can come up with too many.)

I also find myself having a dream of playing a "Repeat ${PlayerCount}" card and contriving it so that by quitting on my turn, I simultaneously win and exit the game. (What's the opposite of "ragequit"?)

> What's the opposite of "ragequit"?

Assuming you're trying to invert the 'rage' part of rage quitting and not the 'quit' part (or even both), I think the sentiment you're angling to express is usually termed "mic drop"

"Forbids any card..." means that no one, not you nor an opponent, can put on your board that will break the condition written on the card (or worsen the situation it it's already broken).

For instance, if you have the "varB < varA" condition card on your board with your variable A = 2 and your variable B = 4, then no one can put a "Increment one var by 1" card on your variable B.

Someone could put a "Increment one var by 1" card on your variable A, as it would bring you closer from having "varB < var A"

"Block" might be a better term than "forbid".

If you want programming inspired card game, wouldn't deck building be the natural mechanic?

If you want deck building mechanic, wouldn't programming the game be the natural suggestion?

This is very cool and I'd like to try it.

I participate in an outreach program that help under privileged children. We use project based learning methods to for topics that aren't covered in the normal curriculum. We also don't have access to enough computers.

I've recently looked into "teaching computer science to kids without using computers" because I believe that the skills are valuable in other domains (for example, being able to think through a problem logically or as an algorithm might help them with mathematics or economics later).

Here are two of the resources I've found:

[1] https://code.org/curriculum/unplugged [2] https://csunplugged.org/en/

If anyone would like to reply with more resources I'd really appreciate it.

This reminds me of the great game, Ergo: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/55279/ergo

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/146618

https://github.com/kids-code-games/variables-war/blob/master...

"Increment one var by 1" shows up twice, once as x6 and again as x10 (maybe I'm misunderstanding something here?)

Interesting game! Some of the flavour text might be lost on a 7-year-old, but I can see it being rather quite endearing as a family game.

Nice concept! Good game. And nice presentation.

Wonder if the lack of visuals and random terms/quotes be a detractor from kid's interest.

If you want programming inspired card game, wouldn't deck building be the natural mechanic?

This is cool...and I would back you in a kickstarter campaign...go for it!

Very interesting - gonna test it with my son.

Looks great, and some nice ideas for cards!

Awesome game! I love it!

Let kids be kids and let them do kid’s things. Even if your passion is coding, you must not impose it.

I don't think that's the point. Kids don't necessarily know what they'll like until they try it, that's sort of the whole point of being a kid.

Most of the parents here will abuse their kids on a weekly basis with coding crap until they “like” it. Kids like to run, jump, play, be with other kids, not code.

Boy, be sure to tell that to kid-me, hacking away in BASICA on an IBM XT in his bedroom. Poor guy must be a masochist.

My little brother started programming when he was five. You might want to rethink your sweeping generalizations about "parents here" or kids in general. It's not just rude and obnoxious, it's ignorant and plain wrong.

My son is almost 9, and he is far more accomplished in programming than I was at that age. And I was a precocious self-taught programmer of the TRS-80 era.

I ran around, jumped and played with other kids when I was a child.

I also spent hours programming, and I bloody loved it. My parents don't so anything related to computer science, they had no idea what I was doing.

Kids like different things. I apparently liked to be a smartass.

On the BBC Micro, tape-based games needed to be loaded into memory at 0x0E00. But the floppy disk driver (DFS) took up 0x0E00 to 0x1900, so you couldn't just copy your games from tape to disk.

My dad wrote a simple program in BBC Basic, to load a game from disk at 0x1900 and then relocate it to 0x0E00 and run it. I thought this was ingenious, but kind of slow.

The BBC Micro user guide must have been very good, because I (7) managed to learn enough 6502 assembly language to rewrite the relocator. My version took just a few seconds.

I'm not sure my relationship with my dad has ever quite recovered.

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