Introduction

Learning Resources

Arcade provides documentation for different experience levels and learning styles.

Getting Started

  • The Arcade Skill Tree is a suggested learning order for beginners

  • The Tutorials are guided introductions to new skills

  • The Examples help tinkerers get started quickly

  • The manual in the left-hand sidebar has overviews of concepts and features

Experienced Developers

For more experienced developers, Arcade provides two forms of API documentation:

Community driven

Arcade is a community-driven project, and we rely on support from users like you. You don’t need to be an expert programmer or game developer to contribute.

History

The Python Arcade Library was created by Paul Vincent Craven. Paul was a professor of Computer Science at Simpson College in Iowa. He created the library to teach his students how to program games in Python. The first public pre-release was in March 2016.

There is no question the focus of the library is on education. It’s designed to be easy to use and to teach programming concepts.

The library has grown since then and is now used by people all over the world. The library is mostly used in schools and by hobbyists, but have also been used in various other settings such as visualization, simulation and prototyping. As the library grows it’s starting to be used in more professional settings as well.

Notable Releases

  • First public pre-release in March 2016

  • First stable release 1.x in May November 2016

  • 2.0 release in 2019

  • 2.4 release in 2020

  • 2.6 release in 2021 through 2022

  • 3.0 release in 2024