Apr 30, 2026

Capstone: A Text Adventure

You’ve reached the end of Phase II! You can talk to the user, work with words and numbers, make decisions, repeat with loops, and store data in lists and dictionaries. Time to combine all of it into a text adventure — a story where the player’s choices change what happens.

How a branching story works

At each step, you describe a scene, ask for a choice, and use if/elif to decide what comes next. Here’s a single fork:

Your code — edit it, then press Run

print("You stand at the mouth of a dark cave.")
choice = input("Do you go 'in' or 'back'? ")

if choice.lower() == "in":
  print("You step inside. Glittering crystals light the walls!")
else:
  print("You head back to the village. Safe, but no adventure today.")

That’s the whole engine: describe, ask, branch. String a few of these together and you have a game.

Choices inside choices

Decisions can nest — a choice can lead to another choice:

Your code — edit it, then press Run

print("A treasure chest sits in the corner.")
choice = input("Do you 'open' it or 'leave' it? ")

if choice.lower() == "open":
  trap = input("It's locked with a riddle. Answer 'gold' or 'time': ")
  if trap.lower() == "time":
      print("The chest clicks open — it was full of ancient coins. You win!")
  else:
      print("Wrong answer! The chest vanishes in a puff of smoke.")
else:
  print("You leave the chest. You'll always wonder what was inside...")

Carrying an inventory

Use a list to track what the player collects, and check it later with in:

Your code — edit it, then press Run

inventory = []
print("You find a shiny key on the ground.")
choice = input("Do you 'take' it or 'ignore' it? ")
if choice.lower() == "take":
  inventory.append("key")
  print("Key added to your bag.")

print("You reach a locked door.")
if "key" in inventory:
  print("You use the key. The door opens — you escape! Victory!")
else:
  print("The door is locked and you have no key. Stuck!")

See how Phase II all shows up: input, if/else, .lower(), a list, .append(), and in. That’s a real little game built from the pieces you learned.

Build your own adventure 🚀

Now write your story. Start from this skeleton and grow it — add scenes, choices, items, and at least two different endings (one good, one bad). Make it about anything: space, a haunted house, a video game world.

Your code — edit it, then press Run

print("=== The Lost Temple ===")
print("You arrive at a crumbling temple with two doors.")

inventory = []
door = input("Do you take the 'left' door or the 'right' door? ")

if door.lower() == "left":
  print("A torch hangs on the wall.")
  if input("Do you 'take' it? ").lower() == "take":
      inventory.append("torch")
  # ...continue the left path...
  print("You head deeper into the dark.")
else:
  print("You enter a sunny courtyard.")
  # ...continue the right path...

# later, use the inventory to decide an ending
if "torch" in inventory:
  print("Your torch lights the way to the treasure. You win!")
else:
  print("Without a light, you lose your way. The end.")

Tip: build it a scene at a time and Run often. Big games are just small scenes connected by choices.

What you learned in Phase II

You started Phase II only able to draw. Now you can build real programs that think and talk:

Talk: print and input to message the user.
Words & numbers: strings, math, and converting input with int().
Logic: booleans, comparisons, and if/elif/else.
Repetition: while loops that run until something changes.
Data: lists and dictionaries to store collections, and for loops to process them.
Functions that return answers you can reuse.

Those last few — lists, dictionaries, looping through data, and functions — are exactly the tools real programmers use to work with data.

What’s next: Phase III

In Phase III, you put everything together and build real video games — a player you steer with the arrow keys, stars to catch, asteroids to dodge, a score ticking up — using a games library called pygame, right here in your browser (nothing to install, just like now). Every game runs on exactly what you already know: loops, if logic, lists, and functions. (After that, Phase IV makes you a data detective, and Phase V gives you a first taste of AI.)

You started the summer drawing a single line with a turtle. Now you can build programs that think and talk — and next, games you can play and share. See you in Phase III! 🎮

Capstone: A Text Adventure

How a branching story works

Choices inside choices

Carrying an inventory

Build your own adventure 🚀

What you learned in Phase II

What’s next: Phase III

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