Part 1. Setting up the arcade

This part covers the first three chapters, which are meant to get you familiar with Scratch. You’ll take a virtual tour of the workspace, learning how to use the Art Editor and how to snap together a simple program.

Make sure you don’t skip chapter 3, which teaches the eight core coding concepts. This is where you’ll learn about starting your program, XY coordinates, conditional statements, loops, variables, Booleans, cloning, and broadcasting. These ideas will repeat in every game chapter, so make sure you set aside time to dive deep into chapter 3, and don’t move on until you think you have a basic understanding of these concepts.

Along the way, you’ll encounter a few recurring helpful boxes titled Fix It, Learn It, and Answer This. These boxes are meant to teach, not quiz you, so don’t feel stressed out about trying to answer questions. Use these boxes to learn important facts and tricks that will help you make your games.

Okay, so you may be thinking right now, “All of this is fine, but I want to get to the game making!” You will, but these first chapters are super important so you don’t get lost in the rest of the book. Plus they’re hands-on: you’ll learn by doing, making mini programs that help you understand how the pieces of games fit together.