One of the best ways to get started in programming is by creating games in Scratch. Building your own video game is a huge incentive for children and adults alike to get involved in programming, explore its possibilities and learn key concepts such as loops, conditionals, variables and more in a meaningful way.
What is Scratch?
Scratch is a program created specifically for teaching programming. It is free and supported by a huge community of people creating games, stories, presentations and almost anything else you can imagine making with code. Everything you learn with it will also be useful later when learning professional programming languages.
You can find more information on the official Scratch website.
Ideas for creating games in Scratch
There are many possibilities when it comes to making games in Scratch. You can build platform games, tag games, Space Invaders and much more. The possibilities are huge. Here are a few examples.
Tag game
This is a very simple video game in which we control one character while another tries to catch us. We measure how long it takes to reach us, which makes it easy to turn into a competition and see who survives the longest.
Automatic drawing in Scratch
In this game we create geometric drawings that the characters generate as they move through the stage.
Car circuit
We create a racing track and our goal is to drive our vehicle as fast as possible. The time of each lap is counted as if we were in a Formula 1 qualifying session.
You control it with the left and right arrow keys.
Ping-pong game
Here we have the classic ping-pong game in which two players try to stop the ball from reaching their back line. If it does, the opponent scores a point.
Question and answer game
Here is a very simple way to make a quiz game in the style of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Every time we answer a question correctly we score a point, and it can be configured with as many questions as we want.
Space Invaders
An alien army is trying to invade us and we have to stop it by shooting them down. It is the game that ruled arcades in the 1980s, brought into Scratch for today. It allows many different configurations so you can customise it to your taste.
Our character moves with the left and right arrow keys and shoots with the space bar.
