Real Python: Build a Tic-Tac-Toe Game With Python and Tkinter

Playing computer games is a great way to unwind or challenge yourself. Some people even do it professionally. It’s also fun and educational to build your own computer games. In this tutorial, you’ll build a classic tic-tac-toe game using Python and Tkinter.

With this project, you’ll go through the thought processes required for creating your own game. You’ll also learn how to integrate your diverse programming skills and knowledge to develop a functional and fun computer game.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Program the classic tic-tac-toe game’s logic using Python
• Create the game’s graphical user interface (GUI) using the Tkinter tool kit
• Integrate the game’s logic and GUI into a fully functional computer game

As mentioned, you’ll be using the Tkinter GUI framework from the Python standard library to create your game’s interface. You’ll also use the model-view-controller pattern and an object-oriented approach to organize your code. For more on these concepts, check out the links in the prerequisites.

To download the entire source code for this project, click the link in the box below:

Demo: A Tic-Tac-Toe Game in Python

In this step-by-step project, you’ll build a tic-tac-toe game in Python. You’ll use the Tkinter tool kit from the Python standard library to create the game’s GUI. In the following demo video, you’ll get a sense of how your game will work once you’ve completed this tutorial:

Your tic-tac-toe game will have an interface that reproduces the classic three-by-three game board. The players will take turns making their moves on a shared device. The game display at the top of the window will show the name of the player who gets to go next.

If a player wins, then the game display will show a winning message with the player’s name or mark (X or O). At the same time, the winning combination of cells will be highlighted on the board.

Finally, the game’s File menu will have options to reset the game if you want to play again or to exit the game when you’re done playing.

If this sounds like a fun project to you, then read on to get started!

Project Overview

Your goal with this project is to create a tic-tac-toe game in Python. For the game interface, you’ll use the Tkinter GUI tool kit, which comes in the standard Python installation as an included battery.

The tic-tac-toe game is for two players. One player plays X and the other plays O. The players take turns placing their marks on a grid of three-by-three cells. If a given player gets three marks in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, then that player wins the game. The game will be tied if no one gets three in a row by the time all the cells are marked.

With these rules in mind, you’ll need to put together the following game components:

• The game’s board, which you’ll build with a class called TicTacToeBoard
• The game’s logic, which you’ll manage using a class called TicTacToeGame

The game board will work as a mix between view and controller in a model-view-controller design. To build the board, you’ll use a Tkinter window, which you can create by instantiating the tkinter.Tk class. This window will have two main components:

1. Top display: Shows information about the game’s status
2. Grid of cells: Represents previous moves and available spaces or cells

You’ll create the game display using a tkinter.Label widget, which allows you to display text and images.

For the grid of cells, you’ll use a series of tkinter.Button widgets arranged in a grid. When a player clicks one of these buttons, the game logic will run to process the player’s move and determine whether there’s a winner. In this case, the game logic will work as the model, which will manage the data, logic, and rules of your game.

Now that you have a general idea of how to build your tic-tac-toe game, you should check out a few knowledge prerequisites that’ll allow you to get the most out of this tutorial.

Prerequisites