Pygame Memory Card with list of images

January 20, 2023

I’m trying to build a memory card game using pygame where I list the cards that are a match:

# Load the images
image1 = pygame.image.load("1.png")
image2 = pygame.image.load("2.png")
image3 = pygame.image.load("3.png")
image4 = pygame.image.load("4.png")
# Create a list of image pairs
images = [[image1, image2], [image3, image4]]

When I run the code, get this error message:

screen.blit(image, (i * (size[0] // len(images)), 0))
TypeError: argument 1 must be pygame.Surface, not list

My code looks like this:

import pygame
import random

# Initialize Pygame
pygame.init()

# Set the window size and caption
size = (700, 500)
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size)
pygame.display.set_caption("Image Memory Card Game")

# Load the images
image1 = pygame.image.load("1.png")
image2 = pygame.image.load("2.png")
image3 = pygame.image.load("3.png")
image4 = pygame.image.load("4.png")
# Create a list of image pairs
images = [[image1, image2], [image3, image4]]

# Shuffle the image pairs
random.shuffle(images)

# Create a list to store the flipped cards
flipped = []

# Game loop
running = True
while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

        # Handle player input
        if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
            # Get the coordinates of the clicked card
            x, y = pygame.mouse.get_pos()
            # Get the index of the clicked card
            index = x // (size[0] // len(images))
            # Flip the card
            flipped.append(index)

            if len(flipped) > 2:
                # Hide the flipped cards
                flipped = []

            if len(flipped) == 2:
                # Check if the flipped cards match
                if images[flipped[0]] == images[flipped[1]]:
                    # Increment the player's score
                    score += 1
                else:
                    # Wait for the player to try again
                    pygame.time.wait(1000)

    # Draw the game
    screen.fill((255, 255, 255))
    for i, image in enumerate(images):
        if i in flipped:
            # Draw the flipped card
            screen.blit(image, (i * (size[0] // len(images)), 0))
        else:
            # Draw the back of the card
            pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0, 0, 0), (i * (size[0] // len(images)), 0, (size[0] // len(images)), size[1]))

    # Update the display
    pygame.display.flip()

# End the game
pygame.quit()

>Solution :

You get that error message because images is a list in which each item is a list with two items. A list of images looks like this:

~~images = [[image1, image2], [image3, image4]]~~

images = [image1, image2, image3, image4]

If you want the list to contain each element twice, you can duplicate the list:

images = [image1, image2, image3, image4] * 2

Also, the rectangles that are drawn instead of the hidden images are too large. The rectangles should be size of the images:

while running:
    # [...]

    # Draw the game
    screen.fill((255, 255, 255))
    for i, image in enumerate(images):
        pos = (i * (size[0] // len(images)), 0)
        if i in flipped:
            screen.blit(image, pos)
        else:
            pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0, 0, 0), (pos, image.get_size()))

    # Update the display
    pygame.display.flip()

If you have 2 different images that should match (for example: image1 and image2), I suggest to create a list of tuples:

images = [(image1, 1), (image2, 1), (image3, 2), (image4, 2)]

Compare the 2nd element of the tuple.

if images[flipped[0]][1] == images[flipped[1]][1]:

Draw the 1st element of the tuple:

for i, image in enumerate(images):
    pos = (i * (size[0] // len(images)), 0)
    if i in flipped:
        screen.blit(image[0], pos)
    else:
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0, 0, 0), (pos, image[0].get_size()))