Chapter 2: Planning Your Game

Planning Your Game 📝

Plan it on paper before you build it.

Imagine you sit down at a computer, open Scratch, and think, “I am going to make the best game ever!” You add a cat. You add a dragon. You add a rocket, a pizza, and twelve backdrops. An hour later, nothing moves, nothing works, and you are not even sure what the game is about.

Almost every game maker has had a day like that. The fix is not more clicking. The fix is a plan. Real game studios spend weeks planning before anyone writes a line of code, and they do a lot of that planning with the simplest tools there are: paper, pencils, and talking.

In this chapter, you will turn a fuzzy idea into one clear sentence, pick a goal, rules, and challenge that feel fair, draw your game before you build it, and learn why the smartest first game is a small one. By the end, you will have a plan you can carry straight into Scratch.

2.1 — Start with One Sentence 💡

Every game starts as an idea. Ideas are fun, but they are also slippery. “A game about space” is not a plan. “A game with cool bosses” is not a plan either. A plan has to tell you what to build next.

Game makers have a trick for pinning an idea down. They squeeze it into one sentence. We call that sentence the game idea, and it has three blanks:

“You are a ___ who must ___ before ___.”

The first blank is the hero: who the player gets to be.
The second blank is the goal: what the player is trying to do. You met goals in Chapter 1.
The third blank is the pressure: the thing that makes it hard, like a timer, a chaser, or a danger.

Filling in the Blanks

Here are some game ideas that fit the sentence:

“You are a frog who must cross the pond before the fish eat all the lily pads.”
“You are a robot who must collect ten batteries before your power runs out.”
“You are a cat who must catch the falling apples before five hit the ground.”

Notice how much each sentence tells you. You know what the hero looks like, what to count, and what will end the game. You even know which sprites you need: a frog, some lily pads, a fish. That is why one good sentence beats a whole page of “it would be cool if.”

Where Ideas Come From

You do not need a lightning bolt of genius. Most game ideas come from mixing two everyday things. Take a chore (raking leaves) and add a twist (the leaves blow away). Take a favorite animal (a hamster) and give it a job (deliver the mail). Take a game you already love, like tag, and ask, “What if the ground was lava?”

Try saying your idea out loud to a friend. If they say, “Oh, so I am a frog and I have to get across the pond,” you did it right. If they look confused, your sentence needs work, not your game. Fixing a sentence takes one minute. Fixing a confusing game takes days.

2.2 — Choose the Goal, Rules, and Challenge 🎯

In Chapter 1, you learned that every game has a goal, rules, a challenge, and feedback. Your one sentence already gave you a goal. Now you have some decisions to make. A design decision is a choice you make on purpose about how your game works. Nobody makes it for you. That is the fun part, and the hard part.

Deciding the Rules

Rules tell the player what they can and cannot do. Keep the list short. For the frog game, the rules might be:

Press the arrow keys to hop.
You can only stand on lily pads.
If you touch the water, you go back to the start.
Reach the far shore to win.

Four rules is plenty for a first game. Ask yourself: could a friend read these rules and play without asking me anything? If the answer is yes, your rules are clear enough.

Making It Fair

A game is fair when a player who tries hard and practices can win. The game never cheats. That means:

The player can always see the danger coming. A fish that pops up with no warning is not fair.
The player always has a way to win. If every lily pad sinks at once, the frog is stuck.
The same action always does the same thing. If the up arrow hops sometimes and not other times, the player will blame the game, and they will be right.

Fair does not mean easy. A fair game can be very hard. It just means that when you lose, you know why, and you know you could do better next time.

What Makes It Hard

Challenge is the part that makes a game worth playing. Too easy, and players get bored. Too hard, and they give up. Think of challenge as a set of knobs you can turn:

Knob	Easier	Harder
Speed	Fish swim slowly	Fish swim fast
Time	No timer	30 seconds
Space	Big lily pads	Tiny lily pads
Numbers	Collect 3	Collect 10
Lives	5 lives	1 life

Turn one or two knobs, not all of them. A great trick is to make the start of your game easy and turn a knob a little each time the player does well. That way the player learns first and gets tested second.

2.3 — Draw It First ✏️

You can picture your game in your head, but your head is a messy place. Paper is where the idea becomes real. A sketch is a quick, rough drawing. Stick figures are fine. Boxes with labels are fine. The point is to think, not to make art.

Sketch the Screen

Draw a rectangle. That is your stage, the space you learned about in Chapter 1. Now fill it in:

Where does the hero start? Draw it and write “hero.”
Where is the goal? Draw it and write “goal.”
Where are the dangers? Draw them and write what they do.
Where will the score or timer go? Most games put it in a corner.

Look at your rectangle. Can you tell what the game is about just by looking? If the goal is hidden behind a danger, or the hero is squished into a corner, move things around. Erasing on paper is free. Rebuilding in Scratch takes an afternoon.

A Simple Level Map

If your game has more than one screen, or a long path, draw a level map. A level map is like a treasure map for your game. Mark the start with an S and the goal with a star. Then draw the path between them and drop in the dangers and the safe spots.

A good level map has a rhythm: safe, danger, safe, bigger danger, safe, goal. Players need little breaks to feel brave again. If your map is danger, danger, danger, your players will quit.

Arrows for Movement

Finally, add arrows. Arrows show how things move, and they answer questions you have not thought of yet.

Draw an arrow from the hero showing which way the keys move it. Left and right only? Up too?
Draw arrows on each danger. Does the fish swim back and forth? Does the apple fall straight down?
Draw an arrow for anything that moves on its own, like clouds or a rising water line.

When you get to Chapter 4 and start coding, every one of these arrows becomes a script. You will be glad you drew them.

2.4 — Small Is Smart 🧩

Here is the secret that separates people who finish games from people who only start them: small is smart.

The size of a game is called its scope. Scope is the number of characters, levels, sounds, and features. Big studios with hundreds of people still get into trouble when their scope grows too large. You are one person with a Scratch account. Your scope should be tiny, and that is a strength, not a weakness.

The First Version

Your first version is the smallest game you can play from beginning to end. It has:

One hero. Just one sprite you control.
One goal. One way to win.
One danger. One thing that can stop you.

That is it. No second level. No boss. No shop. For the frog game, the first version is a frog, a row of lily pads, one fish, and the far shore. You can build that in an afternoon, and when you finish it, you will have something most people never get: a game you made that actually works.

Finishing something small feels much better than half-finishing something huge. And a finished small game is easy to make bigger. Add a second fish. Add a timer. Add a second pond. Each time, you still have a working game. Compare that to a giant game with ten sprites where nothing works yet. Which one would you rather show a friend today?

The Later List

Your brain will keep throwing new ideas at you while you build. “What if there was a crocodile?” “What if the frog could swim underwater?” These ideas are good. They are also the biggest reason games never get finished.

So keep a later list. Any time a new idea shows up, write it on the list and go back to work. You are not saying no to the idea. You are saying “not yet.” When the first version works, look at your later list, pick your favorite idea, and add just that one.

Chapter 2 Activity: The One-Page Game Plan 📄

Your Mission: Make a complete plan for your first game on a single sheet of paper. By the end, you will know exactly what to build when you open Scratch.

Part 1: The Sentence and the Rules

At the top of your paper, write your game idea: “You are a ___ who must ___ before ___.” Under it, write three or four rules a friend could read and understand. Then circle the one thing that makes your game hard. Is it speed, time, space, numbers, or lives? Add a short note about how you will keep the game fair, like “the fish always swims the same way.”

Part 2: The Sketch

Draw a big rectangle in the middle of your paper. This is your stage. Sketch the hero, the goal, and one danger, and label each one. Put a box in a corner for your score or timer. Add arrows to show how the hero moves and how the danger moves. If your game needs a path, draw a small level map beside the stage with an S for start and a star for the goal.

Part 3: The First Version and the Later List

At the bottom, draw a line down the middle. On the left, write “First Version” and list exactly three things: one hero, one goal, one danger. On the right, write “Later List” and add every extra idea you had while planning. Trade papers with a partner. Can they explain your game back to you using only your sheet? If not, fix the part that confused them.

Key Concepts Checklist

I can write a game idea as “You are a ___ who must ___ before ___”
I can write three or four clear rules for my game
I can explain what makes a game fair
I can name a knob that makes a game easier or harder
I can sketch my game screen with the hero, goal, dangers, and score
I can draw a level map and add arrows for movement
I know what scope means and why a small first version is smart
I keep a later list for ideas I am not building yet