Continuing the series of 'Coding for Fun', Greg Duncan points out the highlights of the design and coding of a game called "Pirates!" for Windows Phone. Using the Farseer physics engine, the game won't win any awards for originality, but this Angry Birds esque game shows off many gaming principles for Windows Phone, and how to go about building up the app using C# and XNA

Channel 9 has the main points to note, but the full source code and developer notes can be found at Code Project:

Why go to all this bother and both open source and explain everything? Well, the clue is in the final note:

This isn't a complete game at this point, but it's a great starting point and even in this state fun to play with and best of all, covers a number of important things, such as the physics engine, game state management, etc. If you're thinking about creating your own like game, this might be a great article and code to start your journey with...

I can't think of a better visual than building your smartphone app on top of a pirate. Yaaar!

PS when you're done, let us know about your application when it's in the Marketplace, contact details at the bottom of the page.