Designing Games with Scratch

Scratch makes it easy to create games using programming blocks that snap together, in the spirit of LEGO bricks. You can customize your Scratch projects by drawing or importing your own images and sounds. Since Scratch was released in 2007, more than a million kids (age 8 and up) have used it to create games, animations, simulations, and many other kinds of programs.

Here are a few examples of cool games that young people have created with Scratch — including a past winner of the STEM Video Game challenge (and a Scratch Team favorite), Alien of My Own.

Scratchers have made platformers, chess simulators, strategy games, and role-playing games, to name only a few. Many have shared their games on the Scratch website—an online community where people upload Scratch projects, give and get constructive feedback, and teach one another.

So if you want to learn how to do something with Scratch—like keep score, or make a side-scrolling platformer—there are plenty of examples on the website to help you get started. The code for each of the 3.1 million projects on the Scratch website is freely available. If you get stuck, you can post a question and a link to your project in our discussion forum, and other members of the Scratch community will provide advice and suggestions.

Scratch On!

This post was contributed by Amos Blanton and Natalie Rusk, members of the Scratch Team.