Scratch for Experienced Users: Flappy Bat

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Today we made videogames using Scratch, based on the infamous "Flappy Bird" videogame that brought its creators notoriety and established them in the halls of memorable bad game design forever :)

We followed a tutorial I created and chose new sprites for our flappy character--many kids chose airplanes, fish, or other animals, and a few chose bats. The end code looks something like this (this is just the code for the bat that flies through the pipes):

Capture

The final product is supposed to work like this (click on the picture and you'll be taken to the game which you can play):

Capture2

If you'd like to see the kids' projects they are posted here:

Pasadena Library Kids' Blog

The kids did a great job. Even one child who was not really very experienced with Scratch turned out to be quite sharp and able to follow all the difficult instructions. Despite having a lot of technical difficulties, almost everyone was able to go home with a finished game emailed to them, and a lot more knowledge about some of the more advanced, nuanced aspects of Scratch--like setting variables (the "physics" of your game) and creating a platform game with objects that scroll. Kids had to think about setting a numerical value for the gravity that would pull their bat constantly toward the "ground," and then another variable that would counteract gravity--"lift"--every time a user pressed a key to flap the bat's wings. There is really a lot of science and math thinking that goes into programming a video game. I think everybody learned a lot!

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