2-3 hours for kids with basic scratch experience
Introduction
What We're Making
In this project, we'll create an exciting jumping game where you help your character leap over oncoming chickens! Each successful jump earns you points, and as your score climbs, the game gets more challenging with changing backgrounds and faster chickens. By the end, you'll understand how to create character jumps, handle keyboard controls, implement scoring systems, and make a game progressively more challenging as players improve!
Step 1: Setting Up Your Game World 🌍
1. Create a new Scratch project. Click this link scratch.mit.edu to get started
- Click "Create"
- Choose a background for your game:
- Click "Choose a Backdrop"
- Search for "city" and pick the background shown below
- Always save your project. Give it a suitable name like "KA-Level1-MyName". Eg - "KiratAcademy-Level1"
- You can publish your project later and share it with your friends.
2: Creating Your Main Character 🦸
Set up your player sprite:
- Delete the default cat sprite
- Click "Choose a Sprite"
- Pick a character that looks good for jumping. We will use "Avery".
Add basic movement code to our character sprite
- Write code so that when the program starts the city backdrop is shown.
- To make it fun, we will add a sound that always runs in the background. Try to navigate the UI to figure out how to add a sound to your project. After the user gets 10 points, we will switch the backdrop to some other city.
- We will need to create another backdrop called "Game Over". We can add it later.
- Write code so that when the space bar is pressed, the character jumps on the screen.
- For jump, let's make our character go up (change y by 15) in a loop (10 steps). Then the character comes down the same way (change y by -15) in a loop (10 steps).
Create a score variable:
- Click "Variables" in the blocks palette
- Click "Make a Variable"
- Name it "Score"
- Make it visible on screen. Now add the logic to add scoring to your character. The code for scoring is not provided.
Step 3: Adding the First Chicken 🐔
Create your obstacle:
- Click "Choose a Sprite"
- Search for "chicken" or choose another obstacle
- Write code to make the chicken glide from the right side of the screen to the left side of the screen. We have explained the glide block in the basic concepts video. Please watch that video if you are confused. Let's call this sprite - "NPC1". It's a non-playing-character-1.
Step 4: Adding the Second Chicken 🐔
Duplicate your first chicken:
- Right-click on the chicken sprite
- Select "duplicate". Now you have two chickens but they are overlapping, and not behaving like separate non-playing characters (NPCs). To add a delay between the first chicken and the second chicken, we will make the 2nd chicken hide for one sec when the program starts and appear/glide after that. This will make the two chickens behave like two independent chickens with different flows.
Step 5: Changing Background when the chicken collides with the character
Add a "game over" backdrop. You can paint a backdrop on your own.
We'll create a dramatic "Game Over" screen using Scratch's paint editor. You'll learn how to use different tools to create text effects and a cool background!
- Go to the Stage pane (bottom right)
- Click the "Paint" button (paintbrush icon) to create a new backdrop
Creating the Text
Add "GAME OVER" Text:
- Select the text tool (T)
- Choose a big, bold font
- Click on the center of the backdrop
- Type "GAME OVER"
- Use the selection tool to center it perfectly
Adding Special Effects
Cool Ideas to Try 🌟
Animated Effects:
- Create multiple backdrops with slightly different positions for text
- Use them in sequence to create a flashing effect
Theme Ideas:
- Spooky: Add spider webs and bats
- Sci-fi: Include circuit patterns and tech elements
- Fantasy: Draw magical sparkles and swirls
Step 7: Collision logic
- We will use the "wait until touching" logic to see if the character and the chicken sprites collide
- When the main character touches one of the chickens (NPC1 or NPC2) we switch the background to "game over"
- We stop all the sounds and we use "stop all" to stop all the running sprites
