Creating games with Makey Makey

I've had Makey Makey's for a while - they're fantastic little boards with lots of potential in a classroom setting or actually any setting where you want to have a play with coding and making.

Tonight with inspiration from one of my favourite games as a child - operation I created a little prototype steady hands game.  I did this with a bit of cardboard, some tinfoil, lots of masking tape and a bit of trial and error, as well as a Makey Makey of course.  It doesn't look that flash but it was lots of fun and could definitely be worked on further to make it look a little less like a cardboard prototype and a little more like a real board game.

The prototype used a few Dupont cables together with tinfoil and graphite tape to make a complete circuit.  These were all connected to the Makey Makey and laptop then coded to react like the original game would.

As I used scratch I was able to add on the
points feature so gamers can accumulate points within a timeframe decided before the game starts.  The block coding in scratch is pretty simple to get your head around and there are plenty of great tutorials to get your started.  There are also really good help files when you get stuck.

This was just a simple start to a game I'm sure students and teachers alike could think of more complex additions to it.

If you haven't given coding with scratch a go yet here are a few ideas you might like to try in your classroom...

Check out this video posted by Eric Rosebaum

Here are a few more ideas in Padlet form.. 

Created with Padlet