Designing Digital Games: Create Games with Scratch!

by Derek Breen

The easy way for kids to get started with video game design Is your youngster a designer at heart? Read on! Designing Digital Games helps children apply their design skills to video game design using Scratch―and this book! Introducing simple programming concepts over the course of three easy-to-follow projects, it shows your child how to use the free Scratch platform to create a video game from the ground up. An extension of the trusted For Dummies brand, this juvenile book has a focus on accomplishment and provides all the steps to help young readers learn basic programming concepts to complete cool projects. From using sprites to create a game with a digital pet snake to creating maze games and cloning sprites to create a fun, attack-style game, this approachable guide offers simple, friendly instruction while building kids' confidence in designing digital games. If there's a kid aged 7-11 in your life who has an interest in using Scratch to design digital games, this book provides the building blocks they need to take their hobby to the next level.

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2016

About the author

Derek Breen began his first job, a daily paper route, back in 1980 with the intention of saving up enough money to buy his first computer. He purchased a Commodore 64 computer toward the end of sixth grade and spent most of the summer before starting junior high designing sprites, learning the Basic programming language and coding rudimentary games.

Derek was introduced to Scratch while working as a summer instructor for ID Tech Camp at MIT in 2011. While he could appreciate how the software enabled younger children to quickly produce animation and simple games, the pixelated graphics and programming limitations kept him from considering using it in the high school computer science classes he was hired to teach that fall.

Then Scratch 2.0 came along and suddenly his mind was blown by all of the possibilities. The addition of vector graphics, cloning and cloud-based variables added enough power to make it a complete multimedia-authoring platform, basically Adobe Flash for kids.

Derek is a founding member of the Instructional Design and Educational Media Association (IDIEM) and is an active member of the Scratch Educator (ScratchEd) community (scratched.gse.harvard.edu). Most recently, he worked as a graphic designer on the StarLogo Nova project (www.slnova.org) at MIT, as a teaching fellow in Instructional Design at Harvard Extension school and as a curriculum developer for i2 Camp (www.i2camp.org).

Previously, Derek worked as a computer science teacher at Prospect Hills Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the owner/operator of Mod, a cybercafé and digital learning center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and served as a new media producer for KCAL9-TV in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

[Geoff Battle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scratch is rapidly becoming the go to web based programming tool for budding coders. My nine year old encountered Scratch Junior though the school and this book was a great way to step up in to more complicated (for the age) software design. This has a very similar feel to the Dummies books and when I went back to the cover I spotted it comes from the same people. This means the information is very accessible and has an icon system to denote key messages - in this case, top tips, reinforced learning points, opportunities to use maths and ones for coding. These tips add a little flair and humour to the what could be seen as the harder work areas.

There are four classic games to recreate, which have line by line instructions of how to create them in the Scratch interface. The use of varying fonts, which are well spaced, make it very easy to follow. There are plenty of graphical pointers and aids too, so all learning styles are catered for.

My child really enjoyed the first project and repetition, through the other projects, will compound the learning. It's fairly surprising that there are four complete game projects in what looks like a small book. Clever design and a thoughtful approach from the writers and editors.

Recommended to anyone starting their journey with the visual programming language Scratch.