Imagine a gameshow, where there is an amazing prize behind one of 3 doors. If you pick the correct door, you win the prize! Pick the wrong door, and you get nothing!

You can play this game by running the following program:

from random import *

#print the 3 doors and the game instructions
print('''
Gameshow!
=========

There's a prize behind one of the 3 doors!
Guess the correct door to win the prize!
  _____   _____   _____
 |     | |     | |     |
 | [1] | | [2] | | [3] |
 |   o | |   o | |   o |
 |_____| |_____| |_____|

Choose a door (1, 2 or 3):
''')

#get the chosen door and store it as an integer (whole number)
chosenDoor = input()
chosenDoor = int(chosenDoor)

#randomly choose the winning door number (between 1 and 3)
winningDoor = randint(1,3)

#show the player the winning and chosen door numbers
print("The chosen door is", chosenDoor)
print("The winning door is", winningDoor)

#player wins if the chosen door and winning door number are the same
if chosenDoor == winningDoor:
    print("Well done!")
else:
    print("Unlucky!")

Here’s how the program works: first, a random number between 1 and 3 is chosen, which is the door containing the prize. randint(1,3) means ‘choose a random integer between 1 and 3’. The program then asks the player for their choice of door, and says “Well done!” if the two numbers are the same or “Unlucky!” if they are different.

A random number is used so that the winning door is different every time. However, Python can’t generate random numbers without importing the code to do this, which is why the random library is imported at the top of the program.

The lines starting with # are comments. These comments are ignored by Python, but are really useful for reminding you what your program does! Try to use comments in your code from now on, to make difficult bits of your programs easier to understand.

Using what you already know about loops, you could easily improve this game to allow the player to have 3 guesses, instead of just 1. Run the following program:

from random import *

#print the 3 doors and the game instructions
print('''
Gameshow!
=========

There's a prize behind one of the 3 doors!
Guess the correct door to win the prize!
  _____   _____   _____
 |     | |     | |     |
 | [1] | | [2] | | [3] |
 |   o | |   o | |   o |
 |_____| |_____| |_____|
''')

#allow the player 3 attempts
for attempt in range(3):

    print("\nChoose a door (1, 2 or 3):")

    #get the chosen door and store it as an integer (whole number)
    chosenDoor = input()
    chosenDoor = int(chosenDoor)

    #randomly choose the winning door number (between 1 and 3)
    winningDoor = randint(1,3)

    #show the player the winning and chosen door numbers
    print("The chosen door is", chosenDoor)
    print("The winning door is", winningDoor)

    #player wins if the chosen door and winning door number are the same
    if chosenDoor == winningDoor:
        print("Well done!")
    else:
        print("Unlucky!")

In this program, notice that the code for printing the 3 doors is outside of the loop, as they only need to be printed once. The code for generating random numbers and asking the player to pick a door is inside the loop, as these will each need to be done 3 times. If the code for choosing a random winning door was outside of the loop, then the winning door would be the same door for each of the 3 guesses.

Also, \n in the line print("\nChoose a door (1, 2 or 3):") prints a new blank line to the screen. This is done to split up the printed text, to make it easier to read.

Instead of making your program loop a set number of times, it might be more interesting to let the player choose how long they want to play for. To do this, you’ll need to use a different loop, called a while loop. Try out this program:

from random import *

#the user changes this variable to end the game
playing = True

score = 0

#print the 3 doors and the game instructions
print('''
Gameshow!
=========

There's a prize behind one of the 3 doors!
Guess the correct door to win the prize!
  _____   _____   _____
 |     | |     | |     |
 | [1] | | [2] | | [3] |
 |   o | |   o | |   o |
 |_____| |_____| |_____|
''')

#repeat as long as the 'playing' variable is set to 'True'
while playing == True:

    print("\nChoose a door (1, 2 or 3):")

    #get the chosen door and store it as an integer (whole number)
    chosenDoor = input()
    chosenDoor = int(chosenDoor)

    #randomly choose the winning door number (between 1 and 3)
    winningDoor = randint(1,3)

    #show the player the winning and chosen door numbers
    print("The chosen door is", chosenDoor)
    print("The winning door is", winningDoor)

    #player wins if the chosen door and winning door number are the same
    if chosenDoor == winningDoor:
        print("Well done!")
        score = score + 1
    else:
        print("Unlucky!")

    print("Your score is now", score)

    #ask the player if they want to keep playing
    print("\nDo you want to play again? (y/n)")
    answer = input()
    #end the game if the player types 'n'
    if answer == 'n':
        playing = False

print("Thanks for playing.")
print("Your final score is", score)

A while loop allows your program to repeat until something happens to stop it. In this program, you want to keep playing the game as long as the variable playing is set to True. If the player decides that they don’t want to play again and inputs n, the variable playing is set to False, and the loop stops running. The name for data that is either True or False is Boolean data.

Get someone to test out your game, to make sure that it runs until they input n to end the game.

Instead of looping the game until the player decides to quit, you could instead loop the game until the player scores 3 points. The aim of the game could then be to score 3 points in as few attempts as possible:

from random import *

#this variable stores the number of times the game is played
attempts = 0

score = 0

#print the 3 doors and the game instructions
print('''
Gameshow!
=========

There's a prize behind one of the 3 doors!
Guess the correct door 3 times in as few attempts as possible!
  _____   _____   _____
 |     | |     | |     |
 | [1] | | [2] | | [3] |
 |   o | |   o | |   o |
 |_____| |_____| |_____|
''')

#repeat as long as the score is less than 3
while score < 3:

    #add 1 to the number of attempts
    attempts = attempts + 1

    print("\nAttempt", attempts, ": Choose a door (1, 2 or 3):")

    #get the chosen door and store it as an integer (whole number)
    chosenDoor = input()
    chosenDoor = int(chosenDoor)

    #randomly choose the winning door number (between 1 and 3)
    winningDoor = randint(1,3)

    #show the player the winning and chosen door numbers
    print("The chosen door is", chosenDoor)
    print("The winning door is", winningDoor)

    #player wins if the chosen door and winning door number are the same
    if chosenDoor == winningDoor:
        print("Well done!")
        score = score + 1
    else:
        print("Unlucky!")

    print("Your score is now", score)

print("\n** You did it! That look you", attempts, "attempts **")

The while loop in this program continues to run as long as the score is less than 3 (while score < 3:). Once the score gets to 3, the program ends, and the number of attempts is printed.