Teaching anything becomes way more effective when action is involved. For these reasons, educational games have been an increasingly important part of the teaching sector.

This means that for those who are interested in teaching their child how to code, there are games that can make the process a lot more fun and engaging. In this post, we count down the top seven coding games for kids.

Also read: Top 7 coding games

CheckiO

Not to be confused for an io game, CheckiO is a very popular browser-based game where players use code snippets to attack or defend against enemies. The game works with JavaScript and Python.

The game can be immensely helpful for teaching kids as the continues turn-based gameplay keeps the engagement up while forcing players to get creative with the very basics of coding. There’s also an element of problem-solving and task completion involved herein.

You can play CheckiO here

CodinGame

CondinGame is a web app that takes on an interesting sping at competitive programming. Instead of directly putting players head to head against real players, the web app puts you into a task-oriented situation. You can’t move to the next level until you solve the current one.

The tasks/challenges are often disguised as minigames such as controlling a turret to shoot down planes or defending yourself from an attack. CodinGame supports over 20 languages including but not limited to Rust, Go and JavaScript.

You can play CodinGame here

Also read: Budget Gaming Setup 2019

CodeMonkey

Another browser-based game instead here you write code to control your, you guessed it, monkey. The objective of the game is to solve different problems thrown at you using code and ultimately get your monkey to the ultimate prize, a banana.

However, CodeMonkey does way more than that. In addition to being an extremely fun way to learn how to code, CodeMonkey also offers quite comprehensive courses for your kids to learn to code. These courses are of course paid, but you can always try them out for free.

You can play CodeMonkey here

CodeMancer

CodeMancer is a fantasy game, much like some RPG, except you use code to navigate the world. The game is marketed as an educational game for 6-12-year-olds but I don’t see any reason why grown-ups shouldn’t try it as well.

The game is available for PC, Mac, iPad and Android and Kindle. The only bummer? It might set you about $10.

You can get CodeMancer here

Machineers

Machineers is an adventure game that lets kids interact with broken machines and repair them using code snippets and a drag and drop interface.

This game doesn’t really teach coding as much as it encourages the coding mindset. It teaches you to think outside the box to work with what you have and come up with the ideal solution. The game is available for download from Steam and the Windows store.

You can get Machineers here

RoboCode

RoboCode is a serious programming game where the goal is to build a robot battle tank to battle other tanks using Java or .NET. Said robots run on your screen in real-time.

There’s a very detailed tutorial on how to build your first tank in Java and it really helps pick the player up. The game is open source and the links to the source code are provided as well.

You can get RoboCode here

CodeWars

Another serious learning experience, this one is for kids who already have learnt a bit and the above entries might be a bit too easy for them.

CodeWars is an online competitive coding platform which uses ‘Kata’ exercises which help achieve better proficiency towards to the target language. The challenges are still fun and engaging enough for the user to keep coming back. You also get 20+ languages to choose from.

You can play CodeWars here

Also read: Top 7 IDEs and Text Editors to code