This is a terminal educational game to learn PowerShell through hands-on problem solving to teach the nuances of the code language. It's suitable for individual learning or as a team activity with one instructor.
The code is written in PowerShell. The player is asked with questions that are tailored to the system that runs the code. To find the answers, the player would need to utilize new PowerShell concepts each time on his/her own that gets harder as the game progresses. PowerShell's Get-Help and the internet are legitimate tools.
For those unfamiliar with PowerShell, completing the game (excluding bonus questions) should take about 3-5 hours. More advanced users may finish it quicker, though the bonus questions will provide additional challenges ;)
The PowerShell code is compiled into an executable using PS2EXE, making it easy for players to run the game as a standalone black-box application. The executable is zipped and can be downloaded from the Releases section, using the password of infected. Some AVs may flag the executable as suspicious because of the compilation method.
Therefore running it on a VM is recommended.
If using a VM is a problem, the game can also be run by executing main.ps1 with powershell.exe -f main.ps1 on any system, but the unrighteous players would be able to look at the code in plaintext and see the answers. You might need to change the execution policy first Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass on an administrator PowerShell terminal. The actual game instructions are inline.
In case changes are made in the main.ps1 file and compilation is needed, check out the Github Action .yml file to see how it is being done.
The game was originally made to be facilitated by an instructor who can assist players as needed. There are some secret cheat codes to help speed things up for the instructor. To activate them, enter powershellgod in the terminal. The following passwords are available:
omri!- view the answers for all questions or up to a specific question ID.skipto- skip to a specific question.oneq- reveal the answer for one question.
These are great in case someone accidently exits the terminal for instance, or for any shortcut needed :)
The questions start easy and progressively get harder. Each question is meant to cover a different aspect of the language. Of course it is not a comprehensive guide to learn everything about PowerShell, but the ones who finish it will probably be able to take on most scripting tasks. I haven't covered efficiency with the language nor OOP or .Net stuff, but it should be more than enough for a fun game :)
The questions objects are written in a way that it is easy to understand (IMO), easy to see what is the solution for each question (in the last question the particiapants are redirected to the source code so they can take a look), and also easy to add/remove question if desired. I think this amount of questions is more than enough for a fun exercise, but feel free to add questions if you see it fit.
These are the available questions types:
default- The answer is hard-coded in advance in the code.code- The answer is being generated in real time, with the code being also the solution for how to solve this question. Every time acodequestion is being asked (first displayed/wrong answer/after a hint), the answer is being regenerated on the spot again.setup- There are some preperations that the code executes before the question is being asked, the answer is hard-coded.
