Silly toy project made to learn about EDK II

Consists of multiple modules, each implementing a mini-game that can run in a UEFI environment and following the premise of " Win -> Boot, Lose -> Shutdown"

• User Evaluation For Ineptness: Presents a simple math question, the sum of two random numbers from 0 to 99, if your answer is incorrect the system mocks you and shuts down.

• Insult Sword Fighting: Monkey island inspired. Choose the correct comeback to continue booting.

• Fall To Boot: Vertical scrolling procedurally generated tunnel. Reach the bottom or you'll Fail to Boot.

• Age Verification: Leisure Suit Larry inspired. Answer 80s pop culture trivia to prove you're an adult. Get it wrong and the system decides you're too young to use this computer.

• UEFI Says: A memory test... but not for the computer. Simon-like game implementation. Win to boot or fail and shutdown.

Demo videos

User Evaluation For Ineptness Running on QEMU

demo_qemu.mp4

User Evaluation For Ineptness Running on Thinkpad X270

demo_thinkpad.mp4

Fall To Boot Running on QEMU

FallToBoot-qemu.webm

UEFI Says Running on QEMU

UEFISays-qemu.webm

Note

In this README, Insult Sword Fighting is used as the example module throughout. You can substitute any mention of it and its files with any other module.

Running

Real Hardware

1. Get the EFI Application

• Download InsultSwordFighting.efi from releases
• Or build from source

2. Copy EFI Application and neccesary files to ESP

ESP is typically mounted at /boot or /efi reference

# Create directory structure
sudo mkdir /boot/EFI/UEFIGame

# Copy the efi application
sudo cp InsultSwordFighting.efi /boot/EFI/UEFIGame/

# Copy extra file 
sudo cp insults.txt /boot/EFI/UEFIGame/

Insult Sword Fighting needs insults.txt to be present in /esp/EFI/UEFIGame, example insults.txt provided

User Evaluation For Ineptess needs phrases.txt to be present in /esp/EFI/UEFIGame, example phrases.txt provided

Age Verification needs questions.txt to be present in /esp/EFI/UEFIGame, example questions.txt provided

3. Create EFI boot entry

Easiest way is to use efibootmgr

sudo efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 \ 
    --loader '\EFI\UEFIGame\InsultSwordFighting.efi' \
    --label "UEFIGame"

Adjust --disk and --part to match your system

4. Reboot and run

Restart your system and enter the UEFI Setup (formerly known as BIOS), look for the boot options section and select the EFI entry you just created

QEMU + OVMF

1. Install Dependencies

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S qemu edk2-ovmf
# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install qemu-system-x86 ovmf
# Fedora
sudo dnf install qemu edk2-ovmf

2. Prepare Virtual FAT Filesystem

Qemu can emulate a virtual drive with a FAT filesystem. It works by prepending fat: to a directory name. reference

# Create directory structure
mkdir -p uefi_disk/EFI/UEFIGame

3. Copy EFI Application and neccesary files

Get InsultSwordFighting.efi either from the release section or build it yourself and copy it on the virtual disk

# Copy the application
cp InsultSwordFighting.efi uefi_disk/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.efi

# Optional: Copy phrases file (must be UTF-16)
cp phrases.txt uefi_disk/EFI/UEFIGame/

4. Launch QEMU

qemu-system-x86_64 \
    -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly=on,file=/usr/share/edk2/x64/OVMF_CODE.4m.fd \
    -drive file=fat:rw:./uefi_disk,format=raw,if=virtio \
    -cpu qemu64,+rdrand

Notes:

• Replace OVMF path if needed (common alternatives: /usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.fd)
• The BOOTX64.EFI filename is required for automatic UEFI boot

Extra files

Extra files should be placed in the same directory as the .efi file.

User Evaluation For Ineptness

phrases.txt

This file is optional. If it is not present, the game will always use the same fallback phrase.

Example provided: phrases.txt

How it works

The game will choose a random phrase (Reservoir Sampling) from this file as response if the user fails the question. If the file is not available or something crashed the game falls back to a default phrase.

Format

Nothing fancy, check the example phrases.txt provided

• file must be UTF-16
• phrases can be multiline
• phrases are separated by 1 empty line (\n\n)

Insult Sword Fighting

insults.txt

This file is mandatory and must be UTF-16. Example provided: insults.txt

How it works

The game will choose a random insult and its responses.

Format

Insult
Correct comeback
incorrect comeback
another incorrect comeback
...
as many incorrects comebacks as you want

Another insult
Correct comeback
...

Age Verification

questions.txt

This file is optional. If not present, the game uses a fallback question. Example provided: questions.txt

How it works

The game will choose a random trivia question (Reservoir Sampling) about 70s/80s pop culture.

Format

Question text
Correct answer
Wrong answer
Wrong answer
Wrong answer

Another question
Correct answer
...

• File must be UTF-16
• First answer after the question is always the correct one (answers are shuffled on display)
• Questions are separated by 1 empty line

failmessages.txt

This file is optional. Contains snarky messages shown when you fail. Example provided: failmessages.txt

• File must be UTF-16
• Messages are separated by 1 empty line

Building

Instructions

1. Environment Setup

Follow the instructions to get a working EDK II build environment

All following commands should be run inside the edk2 directory

2. Clone

Clone this repo as UefiGamePkg

git clone https://github.com/mycroftsnm/UEFIGame.git UefiGamePkg       

3. Build

First of all, run edksetup.sh (or edksetup.bat if using windows)

source edksetup.sh

Build command example

build -p UefiGamePkg/UefiGamePkg.dsc -a X64 -t GCC5 -b DEBUG -m UefiGamePkg/InsultSwordFighting.inf  

The -m part is useful to avoid building all MdeModulePkg modules.

This will generate a (hopefully) working efi binary at Build/UefiGame/DEBUG_GCC5/X64/InsultSwordFighting.efi