I just finished the flock of birds game: http://www.checkio.org/mission/feed-pigeons/publications/crflammang/python-3/first/

I'm a novice. Before attempting this game, I'd just start throwing out code and muscle my way through the situation. I found that I got really confused if I tried that here, so for the first time I tried leaving really neat comments for MYSELF, so I could follow along what I was doing.

It helped immensely. Writing comments down first, then breaking them up into blocks/hierarchies, then eventually replacing them with code. It just let me keep cracking away at it without getting overwhelmed.

Definitely going to comment in the future.