Learning to code your own shoot-'em-up game is infinitely more satisfying than beating any end-of-level boss. While millions of us enjoy nothing more than spending hours racking up high scores on our favourite video games, too few are exposed to an even more gratifying way to spend time — making them.

Tested to run on the latest Raspberry Pi hardware and operating system, the games and instructions in this book work on Windows, macOS, or Linux.

This book teaches Python and Pygame development, helping you to understand the games you play and create almost anything your imagination can come up with. As you work your way up to creating your own shoot-‘em-up game, you’ll learn how to:

• Create shapes and paths
• Move sprites and detect collisions
• Handle keyboard, mouse, and gamepad input
• Add sound and music
• Simulate physics and forces

Although this book isn't aimed at complete programming beginners, it isn’t too advanced either. If you've written programs in Python (or a similar programming language) and can perform basic administrative tasks — such as creating files and navigating your computer's file system — without too much difficulty, then you're ready to get started.