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?

Have you played other programming related games?

Here’s a search result from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Programming/?flavor=contenthub_toprated

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.

Oh, thanks for posting that second video! I’m sure the action video works great for some people, but it’s not my style, I find those highly stylized, quick cut, action videos can be very misleading about how a game is actually played. They must be effective though because game developers always seem to release trailers like that… Anyway, the second video with the actual gameplay looks very promising, I’m excited for this game!

I think one of the most interesting applications of this technology is linking suspects to crimes. One of the key pieces of evidence used in convictions is proving that the suspect was at the scene of the crime. If they can’t provide a solid alibi, or reason for them to have been there, then they’re basically screwed.

In the past, games were developed with specific hardware in mind. They didn’t really think of how their game would run on modern PCs 25+ years later. Some games even used that as a feature, famously, Space Invaders devs noticed that the game started speeding up as players destroyed more of the enemies because it didn’t have to render them and so it made the game harder as you progressed which was more fun!

By the way, there are ways to run retro games with speed limiters, you’ve just got to look into it more.

I’d recommend: Hades, Dead Cells, The Binding of Isaac, and FTL