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Make Your Own Scratch Games!
Learn to make interactive games with Scratch—the beginner-friendly, block-based programming language from the MIT Media Lab! Anna Anthropy, game designer extraordinaire, will show you how to do everything from building a game map to creating animations and debugging the end product. Take a peek inside the history of video game design, learn programming basics, and turn your ideas into creative games that you can play and share with your friends.
Learn how
•Draw characters like a hungry, leaf-eating bug•Animate characters—make them walk, jump, climb, and fall!
•Create objects for your player to collect and obstacles to avoid
•Design multiple levels to create a cave exploring platform game•Create sound effects and music for your games
•Share your games online and use player feedback to improve your games
Isn’t it time to Make Your Own Scratch Games ? The world is waiting!
Covers Scratch 3.0
Learn how
•Draw characters like a hungry, leaf-eating bug•Animate characters—make them walk, jump, climb, and fall!
•Create objects for your player to collect and obstacles to avoid
•Design multiple levels to create a cave exploring platform game•Create sound effects and music for your games
•Share your games online and use player feedback to improve your games
Isn’t it time to Make Your Own Scratch Games ? The world is waiting!
Covers Scratch 3.0
192 pages, Paperback
Published July 2, 2019
9 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 25, 2023
Fun but flawed
I was a bit torn about how to rate this book. In the end, the positives do outweigh the negatives, so I was a bit more forgiving of the flaws than I might have been otherwise.
The positives are that the projects are fun and provide a good progression of skills. Anna also provides excellent instructions that should allow most young readers of the book to complete the games. The book also introduces some pretty advanced Scratch programming for an introductory book, but does so in a way that the readers will likely be successful.
The negatives are that the book doesn't really take full advantage of Scratch and the Scratch community. And some of the programming practices are questionable, at best. Messages and message handling are introduced early on as a way to communicate between sprites, but this more advanced topic is introduced in a way that is a natural part of the game so it really works. What doesn't work is using messages and message event handlers to execute code blocks within the sprite. I couldn't understand using this awkward mechanism for encapsulation, instead of creating blocks - the tool Scratch provides for creating new functions. A function call would have made much more sense (and taught another CS concept) instead of sending messages to yourself.
There's also an entire chapter on tools you can download for creating and editing audio files. Sure, there are some cool tools covered in the chapter, but why leave the Scratch development environment - especially if the reader can't download a program like a reader on a school computer or a Chromebook? Granted, the Scratch audio editor isn't as full-featured as the tools covered in the chapter, but it is capable enough for creating background music and sound effects.
Another strange suggestion was to embed your Scratch games on itch.io. Sure, I really like itch.io as a place to discover and enjoy a variety of indie games, but it makes more sense to create a studio and share your Scratch games in the Scratch community. Most people will go to the Scratch website when they're going to look for Scratch games.
Finally, this book could have used a bit more editing. There were a number of typos, mislabelled figures, and figures that didn't match the text.
Overall, I did enjoy the book and look forward to using it as a guide for a workshop for young people this summer.
I was a bit torn about how to rate this book. In the end, the positives do outweigh the negatives, so I was a bit more forgiving of the flaws than I might have been otherwise.
The positives are that the projects are fun and provide a good progression of skills. Anna also provides excellent instructions that should allow most young readers of the book to complete the games. The book also introduces some pretty advanced Scratch programming for an introductory book, but does so in a way that the readers will likely be successful.
The negatives are that the book doesn't really take full advantage of Scratch and the Scratch community. And some of the programming practices are questionable, at best. Messages and message handling are introduced early on as a way to communicate between sprites, but this more advanced topic is introduced in a way that is a natural part of the game so it really works. What doesn't work is using messages and message event handlers to execute code blocks within the sprite. I couldn't understand using this awkward mechanism for encapsulation, instead of creating blocks - the tool Scratch provides for creating new functions. A function call would have made much more sense (and taught another CS concept) instead of sending messages to yourself.
There's also an entire chapter on tools you can download for creating and editing audio files. Sure, there are some cool tools covered in the chapter, but why leave the Scratch development environment - especially if the reader can't download a program like a reader on a school computer or a Chromebook? Granted, the Scratch audio editor isn't as full-featured as the tools covered in the chapter, but it is capable enough for creating background music and sound effects.
Another strange suggestion was to embed your Scratch games on itch.io. Sure, I really like itch.io as a place to discover and enjoy a variety of indie games, but it makes more sense to create a studio and share your Scratch games in the Scratch community. Most people will go to the Scratch website when they're going to look for Scratch games.
Finally, this book could have used a bit more editing. There were a number of typos, mislabelled figures, and figures that didn't match the text.
Overall, I did enjoy the book and look forward to using it as a guide for a workshop for young people this summer.
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