Coding Games in Python (DK Help Your Kids)

Exceptional paper quality, with Minecraft-style pixel art and great-looking step-by-step instructions, for kids. Great choice as well of Python, as a minimalist coding language, and Pygame Zero as a super-simple game development library. You could hardly find a better minimalist combination. Beware however the Python source code is not at all available online, as it should be. You can only download the resource files (images and sound) associated to each book example. That's a miss.

This is the fourth game-oriented Python book I've purchased to help my kids learn coding skills. So far, I think this one is my favorite book for graphical gaming titles. I purchased the paperback version; it's over 200 pages, and each page is full of practical skills and helpful teaching. Every chapter tackles a different game and breaks down exactly what's going on and how to apply the programming concepts that the authors are teaching you. After two necessary intro chapters on getting a very beginner-level knowledge of Python, you're then provided 9 chapters that help you build increasingly sophisticated and fun games. We actually enjoy playing these games because they have the right mixture of low-res (retro) graphics and simple interactivity. ==Who is this book for? == Parents with kids as young as 7 or 8 can help their little ones begin a real programming language. You don't need pseudo-coding or fancy robots to learn to code--just this book and a free copy of Python will do the trick. You can even use the $35 Raspberry Pi as your computer if you have a TV and a keyboard lying around. For older kids in their tweens or early teens, this book will be all they need, even with no help from adults. ==How is Coding Games in Python different?== This book is a great balance of depth and fun. There isn't nearly as much theory and explanation as the excellent titles by Al Sweigart have, but this book does provide enough detail and troubleshooting advice to help you glimpse what's going on under the hood. The authors even teach you to use a graphical module called Pygame Zero, which is a lightweight way to start coding games with graphics. It's also a great introduction to the full-blown Pygame later on. ==Any Downsides to this book?== This isn't a substitute for a real computer science class. I felt that Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python (by Sweigart) introduced you to most of the concepts and theory to succeed in a high school level computer science curriculum. Instead, this book focused on getting plenty of experience, even if that means that your kid doesn't necessarily know everything that's going on with the code. I feel like parents that already know Python will be able to use this book as a hook to get kids interested and will be able to explain the areas that the book only glosses over.

My 7 year old wants to be a computer game designer. She's messed around with Scratch a bit, but I wanted to introduce her to a text based programming language. She's still having some trouble grasping the concepts, but I think this book is about as simple as Python can be made for a kid. And they'll start programming video games almost right away (really after the first chapter). I've never used Pygame before, so I didn't realize how simple the games could be. The exercises provided in this book are really perfect and progressive from one to the next. Probably the only thing I'd ask for is some kind of online counterpart with videos they could watch about concepts like loops, functions, and variables where my kid seems to go through the motions just fine but I'm not convinced that she actually "gets" it. To be fair, my daughter is a little young for this. This book would likely be perfect for a 9 or 10 year old.

I'm teaching programming to my son using this book, and he asks me when we will continue! Games are easy, and descriptions are clear. From my point of POV, code quality is not great; as a professional SW developer, I can see the ways to improve it, but it's probably good enough for kids. As a plus: all code is verified and works as is.

As a Python coder myself, I would have loved to have this book as a child. It has hours of fun projects. The learning curve is approachable and the projects are fun. Highly recommended. My daughter is 5 and she enjoys reading it on her own. However to effectively teach your child coding, plan on spending time going through the book together. It has been a fun experience!

This is a great project book for beginners. It walks you through step by step on what to do. The book has a link to go to for free to download all the assets you need to make the games. The games build on from what you did in the previous project which is nice. I like the tips at the end of each chapter with suggestions on what to try. I even was able to go back to previous projects and add in code to do more advanced things as I learned

Seven year old son really loves this, which is great. However, it's a little outdated and there's lots of settings to go through for set up. Depending on audience, there's also a little bit of context missing from explanations. This is not the kind of book that you can hand someone to expect to teach themselves :) once they start picking up though there's good content to get them developing.

The product was shipped very quickly and was of great quality.