How to Make a Quantum Game with…

Chris Ferrie
3 min readAug 20, 2024

#IYQ25 ⚛️

The United Nations officially declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. But why wait? Let the fun begin today!

Global Quantum Game Jam

The Global Quantum Game Jam happens every September; this year is its 10th anniversary! As a special treat, they are partnering with Quokka! 🐹

Register here (virtual and in person)

🌏 While the “global” part is virtual, the Aussie part will be live and in-person! Join me in Melbourne 14–15 September 2024 to make games, learn about quantum computing, and have fun!

🐹 Quokka?

You’re in, but what you really want to know is: what the heck is a Quokka, and how do I use it to make a quantum game?! 🤔

Well, technically, a quokka is an adorable Australian marsupial. I mean, look at this thing!

But, no, that’s not the quokka we are talking about.

In quantum terms, a Quokka is your personal quantum computer emulator. It works like this:

In simple terms, when working with quantum computing, you control the input program and the output bits. The inner workings remain inaccessible, particularly the “quantum” bits (or qubits), which the Quokka processes internally.

🎮 Quantum Games

There are many ways to create a quantum game, but these tutorials will focus on building games defined by quantum programs that can run on real quantum computers (in the future) and Quokka (today!). 🕹️

We’ve prepared four tutorials of increasing complexity:

  1. Superposition Guessing Game: This tutorial demonstrates how to incorporate the concept of superposition into a simple “guess my number” game.
Video walk-through. 🤓
  1. Entanglement Guessing Game: Learn how to incorporate the concept of entanglement into a game where two correlated numbers must be guessed.
Video walk-through.🔗
  1. Teleportation Matching Game: This tutorial introduces the idea of quantum teleportation and shows how to create a variant of a matching pairs game with a more advanced quantum concept. 🚀
  2. Quokka Tic-Tac-Toe: The final, more advanced tutorial introduces some of the mathematics behind quantum computation. It demonstrates how to create variations on Tic-Tac-Toe with quantum instructions as “moves.” 🎲

We can’t wait to see the quantum games you create! 🌟

If you want more content, check out the tutorial on Quantum Computing Myths! 👻

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Chris Ferrie

Quantum theorist by day, father by night. Occasionally moonlighting as a author. csferrie.com