Mind Over Matter

 

Intro

For this blog post I’ll be talking about my most recent science project, “Mind Over Matter.” I’ll be going into depth on how I built and learned how to make my video game about atoms, as well as some of the challenges I faced making it. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started!

 

About the Scratch Website 

To make this video game we used this app called Scratch. The fun thing about Scratch is that you can learn and make so many new and different things! Scratch is a free website that anyone can access. Another interesting fact about this game is that people all around the world can publicly post games they’ve made and you can try them out! 

 

 

 

 

 

My First Impression 

If I’m being completely honest when I first tried out Scratch, I didn’t like it one bit! It was glitchy, confusing and a completely new experience. There were so many options and codes to make a video game, it was pretty overwhelming. I found ways to overcome this though! 

 

Learning About Scratch  

Learning about Scratch was a bit of a process, but once I got the hang of it, everything became so much easier. Since there were so many things you could make on Scratch, they couldn’t possibly create a tutorial for everything, now could they? So I had to resort to YouTube! (It is very helpful, you should try it sometime.) YouTube wasn’t my ONLY helpful source though, I could always rely on my friends, classmates and teachers, too!  

 

 

Project Criteria

Now, for this project, yes, there was obviously a criteria but it was pretty wide ranged. What I mean is that we needed to make a video game that showed our knowledge of atoms but we  could choose what we wanted to do from there! For example, a friend of mine made a game where your goal was to catch an atom. Throughout their video game, my friend demonstrated their knowledge about atoms and a few other science related topics that surrounded this project.

 

 

 

My Video Game Proposal + What My Video Game is About 

My Video Game Proposal

Below is the criteria for making MY video game proposal

 

 

Here is the proposal I submitted for my video game. (note that SOME things in this proposal may have changed since I made the proposal a while before I finished my video game)

 

 

 

My Video Game

 My game is called “Atoms Trivia” which is pretty self explanatory so you may have already guessed what it’s about.  

 

 

 

 

This single player game starts off with a character introducing the rules. In my game, you’re asked 10  yes or no questions, all relating to atoms.  

If you’re interested, this is your “teacher” in my video game. 

 

 

 

 

 

Your goal is to get as many points as possible by the time you’ve reached the end of the game. I tried to incorporate some humour into this game, so if you do play it and get some answers wrong, don’t be offended by the teacher’s negative responses. Something to note is that some of the questions you’re given are very easy, while others are a bit tricky.  Overall, this game is a great way to test your knowledge about atoms, and if you don’t do well the first time, you’re always able to try again!

 

 

How I Answered The Driving Question 

There were many ways I showed my knowledge of an atoms in my video game. For example, Since it was a trivia game, I demonstrated my understanding of atoms by having the correct responses when the player answered “yes” or “no.” In addition to this some of my questions were quite in depth and specific, which showed I knew what I was talking  about.  

 

How I Showcased My Creativity In My Scratch Game!

 I showcased my creativity in my video game in a few ways. For example, I would say I had a creative video game idea (my trivia) and I really enjoyed the answers I coded into the teacher. For example, when you got a question right sometimes she would say “awesome sauce” or “splendid”, which I found pretty funny!  

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, even though at first Scratch was challenging to learn, I used the resources available to help me along the way! My hard work paid off though because I am very happy with my video game result! If you would like to check out my game, I’ll put the link below.

Link:https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/970985741/