Building Mandir Jumper: A Vertical Temple Climbing Game with Amazon Q CLI and Pygame

Hi, I’m Bishal, and I’m a total beginner to programming.

A few weeks ago, I decided to challenge myself:
Could I build a complete game with almost no coding experience?

The answer turned out to be yes thanks to Amazon Q Developer CLI and Pygame, I built my first game:

🎮 Mandir Jumper: A vertical scrolling action game inspired by Nepali culture
This blog is a breakdown of how I built it, what I learned, and how you can do something similar.

🎯 Game Overview
Mandir Jumper is a portrait-mode, single-input climbing game where a Nepali warrior jumps between temple walls, dodges enemies, and collects culturally-inspired power-ups.

✨ Key Features:
Auto Climbing: The player continuously climbs upward.

Wall Jumping: Press SPACE or click to switch walls.

Enemies:

Flying crows

Spinning khukuris (traditional curved Nepali knives)

Power-ups:

Chiyaa (tea): Increases climb speed temporarily.

Prayer Wheel: Grants temporary invincibility.

Score System: Based on height climbed.

Session Highscore: Tracks your best performance.

Mobile-style layout: Portrait screen with 400x700 resolution.

🧰 Tools I Used
Tool Purpose
Amazon Q CLI AI-powered code generation, debugging and design help
Python 3.11 Main language
Pygame Game rendering and logic
VS Code Coding and quick testing

🛠️ How I Built It with Amazon Q CLI
I started with a simple idea:

"A game where a Nepali warrior jumps between temple walls and avoids obstacles."

Using Amazon Q CLI, I broke the game into components:

Player movement:
I prompted:
“Create a character that auto-climbs up and jumps left/right on spacebar press.”

Enemies:
I added crows and spinning khukuris that move horizontally across the screen.

Power-ups:
Prompted Q to add Chiyaa (speed boost) and Prayer Wheel (invincibility).

Scoring system:
Each time the player climbed higher, their score increased.

Session-based highscore:
Stored and reset after each game session.

🧠 What I Struggled With (and Fixed with Prompts)
As a beginner, plenty of things went wrong but with the right prompts, I fixed them step by step.

😵 The game felt stuttery and laggy
I didn’t know how to fix frame rate issues. A quick prompt to Q CLI:

“Optimize the frame rate and game loop to run smoothly at 60 FPS”
instantly made the game feel smooth and responsive.

⚠️ White triangles kept flashing on the screen
These random artifacts were distracting. I asked:

“Remove all background elements that show white triangles or flashing shapes.”

Gone in seconds.

⛰️ Background image didn’t cover the screen
There was a gap on the right side. Prompted Q to:

“Scale the mountain background image to fully cover the screen width.”
That fixed the layout issue.

📦 Project Structure
Here’s a basic overview of how the game is organized:

mandir_jumper/
├── mandir_jumper.py # Main game file containing all logic
├── requirements.txt # Python dependencies (Pygame)
├── README.md # Game overview and instructions
└── .bashrc # (Ignore — system/environment config)
▶️ How to Play
📥 Installation
bash
Copy
Edit
pip install pygame

or

pip install -r requirements.txt
🎮 Run the game
bash
Copy
Edit
python mandir_jumper.py
🕹️ Controls
Action Input
Jump walls SPACE or Click
Restart game R

🧘 Cultural Inspiration
This game is a small tribute to my roots, here are a few elements I included:

Mandir: Temple walls as the core climbing surfaces.

Khukuri: Spinning knives, based on the traditional Gurkha blade.

Chiyaa: Tea power-up because it fuels every Nepali household.

Prayer Wheel: A symbol of protection and calm during chaotic climbs.

🔮 What’s Next?
I plan to keep working on Mandir Jumper and explore ideas like:

New enemy types (temple guards, hawks)

Extra power-ups (double jump, time slow)

Animated backgrounds (clouds, prayer flags)

Touch controls for mobile

Sound FX and ambient temple sounds

💡 Final Thoughts
This was my first ever game, and I built it as someone with almost no coding background.
Amazon Q CLI helped me go from vague idea to playable prototype, and helped me debug things I didn’t understand.

If you're new to coding, trust me you can do this too.
Describe your idea in plain words, and the tools will help you build the rest.

🔗 Links
Source code: https://github.com/zekka02/Mandir-Jumper.git

Screenshots and gameplay:

Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this or have feedback, feel free to drop a comment or reach out.
And if you’re building something cool with Amazon Q I’d love to see it!