Take your favourite game and transport it to another time in history with our Scratch remix guide for ages 9+

Remix these popular Scratch games to tell your own story from any point in history. Scratch’s remix feature is an excellent way of showing interactive design, allowing you to customise existing code and communicate your own ideas by building on top of someone else ideas.

What you’ll need to get started

  • Computer with a modern browser
  • An internet connection
This guide is a great way to make history an interactive subject, and even teach someone else what you know about a historical topic. Using your knowledge of a subject you'll create a game and educate all your players in the process.

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Step 1. Research

For this project you’ll need to select an event or an era that to use as the basis for our game. Think about a subject you might have learnt in school recently, or the setting of your favourite film or book.

Now think about what that might look like as a game. Can you select one or two main characters? What could you use as the background? What sound effects would work well?

Top Tip: Parents, did you know theres a child friendly search engine? Swiggle is used a lot in schools to allow children aged 7+ the benefits of the internet in a safe way.

Step 2. Pick your Scratch game

Searching Scratch is easy, just visit the website and type what you’re looking for into the search bar at the top of the screen.

Here are some games we’ve found that are great for remixing.

Click the photo to visit the game on the scratch website.

Use the search bar at the top of the website to find a game to remix

Pong

Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games. It is a table tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. The game was originally manufactured by Atari, which released it in 1972. Allan Alcorn created Pong as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell.

Things you could remix:

  • Background
  • Player paddle
  • The ball – perhaps add another ball using the duplicate tool*
  • Make something happen when your score reaches certain numbers e.g the background changes or some text appears.

*Top Tip: To duplicate a sprite simply right click and select duplicate, you can do the same with blocks of code too.

Web Cam Video Games

“Move your hands to bounce the characters back up before the reach the water”. This game uses your webcam allowing you to use your body as a game controller!

Things you could remix:

  • Artwork
  • Sound Effects
  • Background

Top Tip: Every time you save a falling sprite, you gain points. Could you an enemy that you have to avoid, and you lose points if you touch it?

Flappy Bird

Flappy Bird is a mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen, under his game development company dotGears. The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them.

Things you could remix:

  • Bird
  • The tubes
  • Background (this game uses sprites for background and not backdrops)

 

Step 3. Customise your artwork

Based on your earlier research you should know who or what your main character is going to be. Perhaps youve downloaded some artwork from google, or even scanned a hand draw image, lets change the current artwork to your new historical one.

First, select the sprite you want to change the look of.

Select the costume tab in the top left.

Now hover over the green button in the bottom left:

  • If you want to UPLOAD a picture then select the arrow pointing up.
  • If you want to draw one yourself, select the paintbrush.
  • If you want to choose one from their library, click the green button.

Now we’ve added our new artwork, we need to remove the old one. Do this by click on the thumbnail (in the left menu) and the click the trashcan icon that appears.

TOP TIP: Some games will reference the artwork in their code. So you’ll need to check the code and see if there are any purple SWITCH COSTUME blocks and make sure they’re switching to the new costume you’ve added.

Step 1. Select the sprite you want to change the look of.

Step 2. Click “Costumes” to display the current artwork.

Step 3. Click the green button to add a sprite from the library, upload an image from your computer or to draw a new one.

Step 4. Added Extras

What else you change in the game is entirely up to you, the limit is your imagination.

If you want to change a sound effect, this is almost identical to a costume – you just click the SOUNDS tab.

If you want to make some text pop-up, then use the purple Say [HELLO] for 2 seconds, and replace hello with your message. Where you put this block of code is up to you, perhaps after your player scores a point – or maybe when they click the green flag at the start!

Congrats!

Congratulations you now have a historical themed video game! Check out our Egyptian Flappy Bird complete with a custom title and artwork throughout.

Happy Remixing

Looking for more creative project ideas?

View all online guides!