Seek & Command

This is a game where the SQL is how you play, not a quiz about it.

There are two halves. In Seek one person is hidden in a database of a couple hundred people and you get a case file with a few clues about them. Every query you run costs a turn, so you are trying to write the query that narrows the list down the most. If you name the wrong person it costs you 3 extra turns. There are 4 tiers and in the harder ones the target moves around, the witnesses lie sometimes, and some clues need window functions or recursive queries to solve.

Command is a turn-based war on a map of cities and the database is the world. You type BEGIN, give your orders as UPDATE and INSERT statements, and COMMIT ends the turn. You can't see the enemy, you only get sightings from wherever your units are standing. The bots write SQL through the same rules you do and you can read their orders after every turn. It's 3 maps, one rival on the first and three by the last.

If you have never written SQL start with the Academy. It's 63 short lessons that start at SELECT and go through joins, window functions, recursive queries and indexes, and it checks your answer by actually running it. The last 11 lessons run on Postgres instead of SQLite.

Other stuff in it:

- A daily case with a leaderboard, one try per day

- Hide a case for a friend and send them the code

- A handbook if you would rather read than do lessons

- A coach that comments on your queries, you can turn it off

Every query runs on real SQLite in your browser, so if SQLite accepts it the game does too. No account, it saves in your browser and works offline after the first load. Nothing is timed.

Best on a computer with a keyboard.