Introduction

Hello, my name is Renata Feješ and I am the creator of the titular game. This game is a project I made for my Algorithms and Programming class. The task was to create an escape room game that quizzed people on their knowledge about algorithms and programming. In the paragraphs below I will explain how I made the game, include a link to the game and a walkthrough of the game.

How I made the game

The concept

The most important part of a game, at least to me, is deciding what it is going to be. The first thing I had to figure out was the story, the plot. I remembered two of my original characters, Kiddo and Dr. Evil-er. Basically, the story goes that Kiddo and her friends regularly find themselves in wacky situations and most of them are stopping Dr. Evil-er’s evil plans. Both of those characters are smart and know a lot about logic and programming, so I decided to use them.

The story came spontaneously, but I will not spoil it. After I had the characters and the story, I needed to figure out how would the game look like and how it would be played. The look was already determined with the characters because I already knew how their world looked like. Figuring out the gameplay was the trickiest part. I first thought of making the main character be able to walk and interact with stuff, but I soon realized that all backgrounds were in perspective and I do not know how to program my character being in perspective.

That would mean I would have to wrap my character whilst they are moving, which I don’t know how to do. So I decided that the game would be a point and click adventure game. That genre of games felt like the best option for this game. I didn’t go too much into detail; I wanted to make the game first and then add the details later, if I came up with any.

The making of

I first made all the assets, I drew most of them. That part was a bit difficult because I had to draw digitally, which I am not a fan of. The art also got pixelated. I also found the questions I was going to use and their answers. After that I started programming. I made this game in Scratch, because I used it before and I find it quite easy to understand and use. In Scratch you have characters and backgrounds. You program by selecting one of those two things, characters or backgrounds, and connecting premade logical blocks to make that thing do something.

Programming

I started by making the intro screen and then a simple cutscene. Nothing difficult. Then I got to the first room. In this game you have more than one room and more than one question per room. I ran into a problem that questions could be answered out of order or be answered at the same time. Scratch has an option where something does something when clicked, but for them to not react, they must be hidden. The questions were linked to special locks, which couldn’t appear after a specific one was completed because locks don’t spawn magically in real life.

I needed to find a way to make locks interactable after specific conditions. I eventually found it. I made the background change after those conditions were met. That worked because the same background can be changed to the same background if it is under a different name. Now that I had the “trigger” I used a forever repeating command to check if an object is being clicked, and if it is to move forward the game. The questions worked like this: you would click on the lock, the lock would cover the screen and the player would be presented with the question and options. Choosing the right one continues the game. The options also had a similar system to the questions.

When I had that down everything was going well, all I had to do was just repeat the commands for the questions and make the story parts. Until I tried to move a character and the game glitched. I tried again and it kept happening. Just by clicking random areas on the screen the game would throw me to a question. I first tried ignoring the issue, but I realized that games should work without needing to be clicked in a certain way just not to crash. I looked at the questions and realized that, somehow, they were being triggered without being visible. For people who don’t use Scratch, when something isn’t visible it means that it, in theory, won’t react until specific circumstances are met. I thought that it wouldn’t react to clicking, but I was wrong. I fixed the issue by setting up a counter. When the counter had a specific value, the forever function would be shut down by an overarching logical function. The counter went up with each background change, that way I made the questions only accessible on their background. I also applied this system to the buttons. After that everything went easily. On some questions I used the click function, but that was because those could appear and disappear. The cutscenes and text were able to be done with a timer and a couple of effects.

Finished product

I think the game turned out great, but there is still room for improvement. I think I should’ve added more things or made the scenes busier, they feel a bit barren. I also think I made the text go by pretty fast. You can still read it, but it feels like it disappears too quickly. Overall, I think the game is good considering I am in my first year of high school and this is my first serious game.  

Here is the link to the game, so you can experience it for yourself:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1118203901

If you have any comments, you can leave them under the walkthrough video down below. I would love to hear them.

Walkthrough video

Where I play the game, explain and solve the questions: