Day 27: Adding an Earth Day Game Controller to our Earth Day Maze

Yesterday we created a simple Earth day theme maze using Scratch.

Today, let's add a fun game controller. 

You'll need a circuit board like Makey Makey or FunKey  and some some alligator clips.

You'll also need some recycled materials, craft material to work with.  Make sure you have some conductive materials to work with.  I used aluminum foil and copper tape as my conductive material.

Since my game was to raise awareness about Sea Turtles and it primarily used the up, down, left, right arrow, I decided to make 4 sea turtles pointing in 4 different directions as my controller.

After a few prototypes made mostly out of Amazon box type cardboard, I spotted a coffee cut holder in the recycling and to imagine turning it into sea turtles!

Inspired by this coffee holder in my recycle bin

I started to imagine a sea turtle 

With the addition of a little color courtesy of Crayola

I used  aluminum foil for shell pieces, and even used a sharpie to add color. 

I used some copper tape to create a long  lead to the underside of the turtle's  aluminum foil 

And cut a slit in the colorful sea scape background that

I could thread the copper tape lead through.

The copper tape leads ran under the seascape to the top edge of the paper,

where I clipped 4 alligator clips that ran to

 a Makey Makey's UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT pins connections

I also created a version that connected the alligator clips to a 

FunKEY board.  Both worked equally well for turning
my crafty sea turtles into a Game Controller
that moved my digital turtle through the maze.

I was so excited to use my new sea turtles as controller that I started to imagine new features to my Earth Day based game.  

In Version 2 below, 

I  changed the color scheme to a sea colored blue

I added a time element by adding music where the game finishes after the music is done

I added a Game Over backdrop that appears after the game is over 

I added a mystery element by hiding the sprites besides a closed door so you had no clue if the item behind the closed door was going to be help the animal escape from extinction until after you opened the door. 

I also added point values to the different items that can count as health for the sea turtle.

In future versions of the game I might add a scoreboard digitally, but for now we could manually calculate the health points or give out  physical 'cards' or 'tokens'  or 'stamps'. 

Try this version of the game below . or  create a fun Earth Day themed controller and attached with a  circuit board  for even more Earth Day Fun. 

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/297165648/