Make a Game

Many of the children should by now be fairly competent Scratch programmers and will have explored and used many of the programming blocks not covered directly in the previous lessons. Some will have already been working on their projects for a few sessions and may be creating a game or a multimedia application. This lesson covers the basics of creating a game and should be explored even if the pupil has decided not to create a game as their final project. Several sample games of differing complexity can be used during this session with alternative video tutorials available.

The simplest game is ‘dog and crab’ and has two sprites created from the sample Scratch images with the dog moving around the screen with mouse-following behaviour and bumping into the crab which makes a sound and moves away. Movement is performed using sensing to follow the mouse pointer and a message is broadcast each time the dog sprite touches the crab sprite to control the required behaviour.

Fish! is a more complex game that can be built by more advanced pupils or maybe those that have already been working on a game type application. A shark moves around in an underwater background eating yellow fish until he gets indigestion from eating the wrong sort of fish. This game involves duplicating sprites to populate the ocean and using broadcasts to coordinate behaviour. A variable is used to keep score if there is time.

You have a choice of three videos for your game: Bat and Ball, Dog and Crab or Fish!.