A game that allows players to experience software development can be an excellent way to introduce programming concepts and coding concepts techniques, including loops and conditional statements. Zachtronics Shenzhen I/O is a game that accomplishes this. It puts players in the shoes unhappy engineers working for a drab company and have to build computer chips by hand. They are provided with increasingly challenging circuits to design, starting with making lights blink according to a certain pattern.
The game’s interface looks very similar to web browser’s developer tools and also teaches scripting. Another great example is Screeps, which blends JavaScript coding with massively multiplayer online gameplay to create self-sustaining colonies. Both games are excellent at teaching the basics of concepts and slowly introducing other players.