- Learnt27 min · instructions, an attract screen, credits
- Basic25 min · finish the cabinet
- Challenge 1–327 min · readable instructions, the arcade test, the full sweep
- Extrabonus · a fourth game, all your own
Review — where we got to 5 min
Three games, three records, and a name on each one. Nothing is missing except polish.
- Every screen is a broadcast, and every sprite answers all of them.
- Records live in variables the flag never touches, beside the name of whoever set them.
Quick-fire
You come back to your project in a month, having forgotten all of it. What is the first thing you need?
Reveal the answer
To know what the controls are. Everything you built is invisible until you know which key does something.
Today’s Topic 3 min
- An instructions screen: one line per game, in plain words
- An attract screen — what a machine does when nobody is using it
- Credits, and saying where the art and sounds came from
- Testing with people who have never seen it
Learning outcome
By the end of this lesson you will be able to:
- Write instructions somebody else could follow — including you, next week.
- Make a menu that is worth looking at while it waits.
- Come back to your project cold and watch it work without you remembering anything.
Learnt — instructions, attract, credits 27 min
1 · How to play
One line per game. The words a player needs, not the words you would use to describe your own code.
- Add a fourth button to the menu and name it HOW TO PLAY.
- Give it its own message:
howto. - Add a sprite for the page, on a plain backdrop.
- Write one line for each game: what to press, and what you are trying to do.
- Show the home button, hide everything else.
when I receive [howto v]
switch backdrop to [Chalkboard v]
show
say [Jump Dash: press SPACE to hop over rocks. Do not hop into bats.] for (4) seconds
say [Bounce: arrow keys move the paddle. Keep the ball off the floor.] for (4) seconds
say [Star Tap: click the star as many times as you can in 20 seconds.] for (4) seconds
How to use this: Click the green flag and read the three lines. Then click the home button (bottom right) as a player would.
2 · What the machine does while it waits
A real arcade cabinet never sits still. Something on your menu should move, and it should say what the best score is.
- Pick one sprite on the menu to be the moving one.
- On
when I receive [menu v], add aforeverafter the show. - Inside it, glide somewhere and back, or grow and shrink.
- Every few times round, say the best score of the day with
join [Best today: ] (best). - Make sure the loop is stopped by the menu stack on every other screen.
when I receive [menu v]
show
forever
glide (2) secs to x: (-40) y: (100)
glide (2) secs to x: (40) y: (130)
say (join [Best today: ] (join (dash best) (join [ by ] (dash holder)))) for (2) seconds
end
How to use this: Click the green flag and leave it alone for ten seconds. A menu nobody is using should still be worth glancing at.
3 · Whose arcade this is
The credits screen takes five minutes and is the only place your name appears. It also says where everything else came from.
- Add a credits screen the same way you added how-to-play.
- Your name, and what you made.
- Where the sprites and sounds came from — the Scratch library, for most of them.
- Anybody who tested it for you.
- If you have an account, put the same words in the project notes on the sharing page.
How to use this: Click the green flag for the menu, then click a game button. Space hops in Jump Dash; ← and → slide the paddle in Bounce; click the star in Star Tap. The home button (top right) always goes back.
Basic — finish the cabinet 25 min
Two new screens, one moving menu, and then a lot of clicking.
Step 1 — how to play
- Add the button, the message and the page.
- Write one line per game.
- Read them aloud to yourself, slowly. Any word you have to explain as you read it is a word to take out.
Step 2 — credits
- Add the screen.
- Your name, the library, your testers.
Step 3 — the attract screen
- Give one menu sprite something to do.
- Put the day’s best score in it.
- Check it stops the moment you leave the menu.
Step 4 — the sweep
- Visit all six screens.
- Come home from each of them.
- Play each game to its ending.
Step 5 — save it properly
- Give the project a real name, not Untitled.
- Save it to your computer as an
.sb3file, or to your account if you have one. - Open the saved copy and check it still works.
The menu sprite keeps gliding during a game.
Its forever loop was never stopped. Its menu stack on other screens needs stop [other scripts in sprite v].
The how-to-play text goes by too fast.
Three seconds is not long for a nine-year-old reader. Four or five is fairer.
The credits screen has no way back.
The home button’s stack for that screen says hide, or does not exist.
The saved file does not work when reopened.
Something was still running when it was saved. Press the flag, go to the menu, and save from there.
Instructions somebody reads
Most instructions are too long and get skipped. Make yours short enough to survive.
- One line per game, under fifteen words each.
- The key or the click comes first.
- No word a new player would have to ask about.
The arcade test
Test it three times over, with a gap each time, and behave like somebody who has never seen it. Every script window stays shut.
- Round 1 — play two of your games straight through, and write down every hesitation.
- Fix the worst thing on your list.
- Round 2 — leave it for ten minutes, come back, and play the other games.
- Round 3 — the next day, play all of it cold, in a careless order.
- Three rounds, with a real gap between them.
- Every game played at least twice across the three.
- A written list of every moment you hesitated.
- One change made because of the list.
Teacher note — the gap is the tester
Nobody waits for a partner here. What finds the bugs is the gap: a pupil who tests straight after building is testing their own memory, and their memory always knows what to press.
Where a room happens to have several pupils at this stage, rotating projects works beautifully as well — everybody plays the project to their left for four minutes, then moves. Treat that as a bonus, never as the requirement.
The full sweep
Write down every screen, every ending and every button in your project. Then visit all of them, ticking as you go.
- A written list, made before you start clicking.
- Every item on it visited.
- Anything broken written down and fixed or noted.
- The list handed in with the project.
Teacher note — this is a test plan, and it is worth naming as one
A list written before testing, then ticked off, is exactly what professional testing looks like. Pupils who have done this six times across Level 1 have a habit worth more than any single block.
A fourth game, all your own
Add a fourth button, and a game behind it that nobody taught you. One hour, from nothing, using only what you already know.
How to use this: Click the green flag, then click the right-hand button to open the fourth game. Click the crystal as often as you can in twenty seconds.
- A game that is not one of the three, and not a copy of one.
- It has a start, a way to lose or to finish, and a score.
- It obeys every rule of the cabinet: its own names, its menu stack, the home button.
- Its record goes on the scoreboard beside the others.
Teacher notes — what to suggest when a pupil is stuck for an idea
The reliable prompt is to take one block and build a game round it: pick random (1) to (10) gives a guessing game, timer gives a reaction test, next costume gives a matching game.
This is the real assessment of Level 1 and it is worth saying so. Everything needed has been taught; what is left is deciding what to make, which is the part no lesson can hand over.
Going further: Level 2 — clones that carry their own numbers, the mouse as a controller, My Blocks, and games with shops in them.
Summary 4 min
That is Level 1. Forty-eight classes, nine finished projects, and one cabinet with all of them in it.
- Instructions say the key first, in the player’s words.
- A machine nobody is using should still be doing something.
- Credits cost five minutes and say where everything came from.
- A project is finished when somebody else can use it without you in the room.
What Level 1 covered
- Moving, turning, gliding, and the Stage’s coordinates.
- Costumes, backdrops, saying, sound, and two things happening at once.
- Events, loops, if, if / else, and the questions Sensing can ask.
- Variables as a score, a countdown, a mood, a switch, a speed and a record.
- Clones, broadcasts, screens, menus, and games with front doors and endings.
- Instructions
- What to press and what you are trying to do. Nothing else.
- Attract screen
- What a machine does while it waits for somebody.
- Credits
- Who made it, and where everything else came from.
- Finished
- Somebody else can use it without you sitting beside them.
Next: Level 2. Clones that carry their own numbers, the mouse as a controller, My Blocks, and games with shops in them.