TuringBot

TuringBot is a programming game about Turing machines.

An ideal Turing Machine is just about the simplest computer imaginable. In this programming puzzle game, you have to program your own little Turing machines to perform certain tasks. A Turing machine is made of two things:

• a tape that can store a series of symbols (here represented by circles, squares, crosses...)
• a cursor that can move along the tape, read and write on it, and has its own state (here represented by your little bot's color)

Each level presents you with a starting tape, and your bot-cursor in a certain position. To the right is a table where you can set the rules of this particular machine. How does that work? Well, for example,

says that if your bot is RED and on its position on the tape reads a CIRCLE, it should now become BLUE, write a SQUARE in its place, and move RIGHT by one step.

You can write any number of these rules (just add or remove them with the plus/minus buttons) and you configure them by clicking on the various symbols, which will cycle between the possibilities. Colors and symbols available to you depend on the level, and movement is always either right, left, or stay in place.

At the bottom you can see the objective - how you want your tape to look like to win the level. You can use the play, pause and stop buttons exactly how you would on a video (namely: stop resets the configuration to the start), and the program will stop running only if there is no rule (example: the bot is BLUE and sees a CIRCLE, but you gave no instructions for that case), or if it tries to move beyond the edge of the tape. Remember to never write two conflicting rules, or the program won't even start! 

This game was made in three hours for Trijam 84. All assets were created in that time, except for the font, which is Silkscreen by Jason Kottke. So were the levels, which is why there aren't very many of them. The theme of the jam was "Bot Commands", and as far as diversifiers go, it was made with Godot Engine, and I hope it can be a bit educational!