- Scratch was one of the platforms that I read about when looking for something to make my game on
- It’s made for kids so I hoped that it would be easy for me to use and help me learn some of the absolute basics
- It uses a jigsaw type of approach to building the code and a simple upload system for it’s assets
The Game Concept…
I want to make something with a score count, a game where things fall out of the sky and you have to collect them
The set up: catching falling stars in cupped hands in a night scene. I want to see if I can create something with atmosphere as well as playability.
3 levels of difficulty – so perhaps there will be an increasing amount of objects that you don’t want to catch. A score of <0 means you lose.
The process:
I wanted to make this quick so used Royalty-free assets from the photo upload site Unsplash.com. I used a start background, a hand (with the background removed) and picture of a star background. I used a sound effect made by recording part of a song I was listening to.
Challenges:
- Setting up the environment was relatively easy
- Understanding the logic blocks needed to set up the falling stars and the score took a bit more work – I found a very straightforward tutorial on the Scratch site.
- There were a few glitchy bits where the score didn’t seem to change, but I realised there were conflicts as I had not updated all the stars and the score was being reset to 0 by the conflicting code.
- When the score is >20 the screen changes to another background and the hand is hidden. This is to indicate that the game is complete.
- The hand seems to have quite a large collision area and even when the stars fall off the screen, they sometimes seem to interact with the hand.
- To enhance the game, I would add some starry music and have a welcome and completion screen
- Perhaps the stars could also spin or twinkle – but that would require me to learn a bit more about animations in Scratch
- I think this has given me a good introduction to some of the core features of very basic game mechanics!
Watch the Game Being Played
