Overview

Scratch is a great development tool to start with if you and your team are new to programming and video game creation. Scratch is free, easy to learn and use, has a great community, and contains many examples. For background about Scratch, its goals, and how they've made programming accessible and engaging, check out Scratch: Programming for All.

Note: Scratch games are played via a web browser, so you will be able to play on modern platforms and web browsers. Game-players will need Adobe Flash on their computers. Adobe Flash is known for having issues around performance and security and is soon to be discontinued, which is leading many to not have it installed on their computers (Krishna, 2017). Be aware of your target audience's potential technology limitations before embarking on this or any game development toolkit.

Getting Started

The Scratch community focuses on sharing. They share demos, code, and ideas and help one another. Scratch embraces the idea of "remixing" and in doing so, projects published on the Scratch website follow a Creative Commons license.

To help you get started and learn how to create games with Scratch, visit their Discussion Forums, Wiki, Tutorials, and Getting Started with Scratch. They even have a set of Starter Projects and a Scratch YouTube channel you can refer to as well.

Sample Games

• Memor-Key
• Spacing Out
• Melting Interactive Story
• Color Switch - Climb

References

Krishna, S. (2017, July 25). Adobe is ending development and support for Flash in 2020. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/25/adobe-ending-flash/