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PYTHON - TKINTER GAME DEV
added March 2026
WHAT TYPE OF GAME CAN I DEVELOP WITH TKINTER
It is suitable for 2D games, platformer games, top down shooter games, simple fighting games, that have less than 100 moving enemies or game characters. Images like sprites(pixelart) are ideal for this, while keeping image sizes small like 32x32, or 64x64, 128x128. You can include game tiles, and backgrounds.
The game can have sounds and images, and actions like: collision logic, movement, knockback. And, physics like friction, and gravity. We can code all of these ourselves with the Tkinter GUI Toolkit.
And, you can build an entire game without adding any external images. You can just use the included shapes(oval, rectangle, line), included with Tkinter. With shapes, you can make simple game characters, like a robot, and dragon.
🎉
In Your Python Tkinter game,
You can include these:
✔️ a Score text
✔️ a Timer
✔️ a Health bar
✔️ a Mini‑map
✔️ selection of Buttons
and also include:
✔️ 10–30 moving sprites(make your own with Pixel Studio).
preferably, small PNGs (32×32, 64×64)
You Can Have Actions, like:
✔️simple movement
✔️simple collision
For UI design, can include
background and foreground:
GAME ASSETS: Make Your Own
-Find on The Web Free
🧱 Game Characters(pixelart)
Fixtures:
Tiles / Walls / Level Layouts
With Tkinter you can include:
✔️ 100–300 static tiles
✔️ 20–40 interactive tiles
✔️ 1–3 layers of background
Sound Files
✔️ Background music + effects
✔️sound effects on collision
✔️variety of Sound effects, about 20–50
✔️Background music -1 track
and
✔️ You can play multiple sounds at once
Music file types
✔️🎼.wav, .mp3, .ogg(preferred)
Game Interactions:
✔️Collision checks, about 20–50 per frame
✔️UI elements, about 5–20
✔️Spritesheet frames, about 50–200 loaded in memory
Tkinter is a good “write once, run anywhere” tool for simple games.
WHAT IS TKINTER
Tkinter is a small sized GUI Toolkit that includes a game loop. Tkinter is included with Python, so we can start coding our games without any additional libraries or modules. Because it is Python we can code it anywhere Python can be coded, including an Android mobile coding app with a built in IDE and
interpreter, that can RUN Python/Tkinter code, and, with a Python
interpreter,(REPL) on a windows computer.
You can also run Python code in a Linux command prompt interface (CLI), like a Linux terminal. However, for our tutorials, we want to keep it simple; so we are going to use a Python command prompt - REPL,(I installed the Python 3.13 app on my laptop); and a mobile phone IDE,(I installed the mobile Pydroid3 IDE Python/Tkinter interpreter). With these two apps, we can code on our windows laptop(or desktop), and on our mobile phone. Same code, cross platform coding.
HOW TO BUILD A GAME WITH TKINTER
Tkinter code has the file extension, example: mygame.py. To build our game code, we simply RUN the file, mygame.py. We can paste the code directly into the
interpreter, or we can call the file in code. If we have added assets, like sprites to our game, then those go into the same folder as the .py file. The
Python interpreter knows where to find them.
For most games, we only require one file for all the code.
On my laptop, I installed the Python app from the microsoft store. It is a Python command line app(aka python interpreter), where you add your codes, then just click enter to RUN the code. This populates a game size window with the game action.
As mentioned, on my Android cell phone, I installed Pydroid3 IDE/Python Interpreter mobile app, which includes a coding editor, and a
Python interpreter. So, i paste my code into the Python editor, or just open the file into the editor, then just click the RUN triangle button, to RUN the code. The IDE
interpreter RUNS the game code, and, populates a window with the action. Simple and easy to do.
PACKAGING TKINTER GAME 📦
Tkinter game apps do not have to be packaged unless you want to package them. To distribute your game, you distribute the(example)
mygame.py file. Then anyone, who has a Python interpreter installed on their Windows computer can run your Tkinter game. And, on a cell phone, your Tkinter game, mygame.py, can run in Pydroid3, which is free to download and install from Google Play.(free version does serve ads).
Additionally, if you want to package your game for a Windows computer; example - mygame.exe, you can do that also. For this, we must install/get a python module -
PyInstaller. PyInstaller does the packaging for the game, and puts the completed game file into a folder.
Once packaged, you can distribute this file, 'mygame.exe', anywhere you want; social media, your website, email. Anyone on a windows computer can click on the 'exe' file to open and play your game. They do not have to have a Python app installed on their computer to run the game. To note: 'exe' file types
do not run on Android phones, however, the game can still be played simply by running the file; example, mygame.py. We will learn more about packaging and distributing Python Tkinter games, as we continue the tutorials.
IS PYTHON EASY TO LEARN?
Python is reportedly, one of the easiest code languages to learn.
Python is used extensively in Machine Learning, and AI. There are many free mobile apps at Google Play store from which to learn Python programming language. The Microsoft store also has Windows apps specific to learning Python language, and many are free.
Tips To Learn Python
I practice coding in my Python 3.13
interpreter on my Windows laptop, a free app from Microsoft store. And, to learn actual Python coding -
CodeSnack, with code examples, a free windows app, also at Microsoft store. On my Android phone, I practice on
Pydroid3's IDE Interpreter - from
LiderSoftKz - free at Google Play.
And, just to learn the Python code language, I use this app
Python from
Coding and Programming, also Google Play, its' free. These
Python Learning Apps do not actually teach Tkinter games, they teach Python.
Basically, I can code cross platform, while learning Python to know Python language, while also learning to code for Tkinter games; which is a game loop, per say, from the Python language.
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