Introduction to Computer Science with Scratch and App Inventor

Does your code look a little bit like this?
Now give your game a try. You should be able to run up the score by clicking (this is how you simulate a
touch) on the mole as it pops up on the screen. Is your game too hard or too easy? You can modify the
difficulty by changing the value on the timer.
Let’s add a reset button that starts the user over at a score of zero. What are the steps to add a new
element to our game?
1) Add the interface element in App Builder
2) Use Blocks Editor to write code to implement the behavior of the element.
Here is what my interface looks like after I add a RESET button.
Above you can see the code that sets the score back to zero
when the user clicks the button. A button click, is handled just
like a screen touch – you can capture the event using a green
block.
Now you should see the pattern for adding new elements to your game. Right now the game is very
basic. What kinds of things could we add to make the game more fun? More challenging? Could you
change the game so that it gets harder as the user scores more points? How about changing it so that
the user loses points if they click and miss the mole? Think about how you might make some of these
changes. Pick one change (it can be one of the ones listed here, or you can come up with your own) and
add it to the game.
Think about how you might figure out how to use new blocks or to accomplish tasks that we haven’t
covered.
mbrace Game Development Workbook Page 46