Catch Me If You Can

Doing some simple coding in Hopscotch I came up with a game that can be both challenging and fun.
The idea of the game is to tap the characters as fast as possible to make them disappear. It develops hand-eye coordination and kinesthetic precision.

Coding:
The coding uses six main functions:
1. Random: This function is essential because it makes the movements  and turns of the characters unpredictable. I used random on the Move distance, and rotate degrees.
2. Move Distance: Makes the characters move around the ipad screen.
3. Rotate degrees: The characters rotates anything between 1 and 360 degrees. Different characters have different parameters.
4. Change pose: to improve the visual appeal of the game, it seems like the characters are moving.
5. All the above function are nested in a Repeat-End function.
6. Invisibility: Set to 100% when the player taps the character.

1-5 are under "When Play button is tapped"
6 is under "When (specific character) is tapped"

The process took some planning before starting the actual coding. Pre-planning clearly helps because you come to the application with a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

Next step:
The next step would be to add a timer, or a way of keeping track of how fast the player was able to eliminate (or disappear) all the characters. A way of keeping track would encourage players to improve their skills.
Also, the game can start with just one character and gradually add more characters, up to the point where the screen is filled with many moving characters. This will function as different levels of difficulty and challenges for the player.

Hopscotch and Hakitzu for teaching coding

I am very impressed with the way that games like Hopscotch and Hakitzu teach coding. First of all they are fun, and they are well designed. Clearly, a lot of work, planning and thought went these games. I will not consider myself a coder, but I have been exposed to coding enough to believe that these games do introduce the player to the world of coding. The games require a way of thinking that coders must have. More specifically, the logic for coding is being developed in these games.

The question about learning something about coding through these games is hard to answer. I will need to play more time and then try to find ways to test is the knowledge is transferable to other platforms. To prove if the games do teach coding there must way of testing the knowledge outside of the games, and also a way of assessing this knowledge. On the other hand, if the games serve as introductions to coding and to demystify the language of coding in a way that when it is time to take a serious course in coding it is not extremely intimidating for beginners, I believe these games can probably achieve that. The player is presented gradually with a set of rules and a logic that then can be used to make connections in a coding course.

Playing, or coding, with Hopscotch while describing what I was trying to do was an interesting experience. Talking through the process in a way made it easy. It seems to me that adults still do that. If we are looking at a map we might verbalize the streets that we need to follow to get from point A to point B. Now, in Hopscotch, verbalizing actually makes it much easier to understand the procedure. I did not experience fiero while playing Hopscotch, in part I believe is because when I was able to make the program do what I wanted it to do, it just seems logic and expected. Meanwhile, when things did not work the way as expected it was easy to feel like a total beginner that doesn’t understand a thing about coding. In other words, failing seemed much more frustrating than the “fiero” of succeeding.