⚔️ Module 9

Text Based Game Part 2

Level-up your adventure: polish the loop, clear the screen between scenes, and roll the dice on random events.

A teen rolls glowing dice while a small goblin changes a theater backdrop. — Random encounter: a potion spill. Chance of being helpful: surprisingly high.

🪄 The concept

When a function must change a variable defined outside it, you may need global — useful for a game_over flag, but use it carefully.

Terminal “animation” is often just prints + time.sleep(), sometimes with os.system("clear") between frames so scenes feel cinematic.

random.choice and random.randint turn a static story into a replayable one — every run a slightly different corridor.

💬 Discussion

Talk these through with a friend, a class, or just your notes app:

Why might too many globals make a game hard to debug?
What random events would make your school adventure fun on a second playthrough?
Is clearing the screen always better? When would you want to keep old text visible?

💻 Code walkthrough

Copy into your editor, or download the .py file and run it. Tinker — change names, numbers, and spells.

global flag and a simple menu menu_duel.py

# Use global when a function must change a variable defined outside it
game_over = False

def duel():
    global game_over
    print("You raise your wand...")
    move = input("Cast (s)tun or (r)un? ")
    if move == "r":
        print("You escape!")
        game_over = True
    else:
        print("Stupefy! The duel continues.")

while not game_over:
    print("\n--- Hogwarts adventure ---")
    action = input("(d)uel, (i)nventory, (q)uit: ")
    if action == "d":
        duel()
    elif action == "q":
        game_over = True
    else:
        print("Your bag: wand, chocolate frogs")

Simple “animation” with print simple_animation_with_print.py

# Repeat prints to suggest movement (clear screen in full projects)
import time

for step in range(3):
    print("The owl flies" + "." * (step + 1))
    time.sleep(0.5)   # pause half a second between frames

Clear the screen between scenes (terminal games) clear_the_screen_between_scenes_terminal_games.py

import os
import time

def clear():
    # "cls" on Windows, "clear" on Mac/Linux
    os.system("cls" if os.name == "nt" else "clear")

for scene in ["Owl arrives...", "Letter opens...", "Train departs..."]:
    clear()
    print(scene)
    time.sleep(1)

Random encounter mini-game random_encounter.py

import random

encounters = ["troll in the corridor", "friendly ghost", "lost first-year"]
event = random.choice(encounters)
print("You round the corner and see a", event + "!")

roll = random.randint(1, 6)   # random whole number from 1 to 6
if roll >= 4:
    print(f"You rolled {roll} — success!")
else:
    print(f"You rolled {roll} — hide behind a statue.")

🧪 Try this

Add two more encounters to the random list. Play five times — did you see variety?
Combine clear-screen + three of your own story scenes. Time the pauses so it feels readable, not rushed.
In the duel menu, add a heal option that prints a message but does not end the game.

📁 Local files

All runnable Python for this module:

module-09-text-game-2/ · all modules

🎬 Video lesson

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