Protect the Planet — winner!
Meet Sean. Sean was the winner of the Protect the Planet category for Moonhack 2023. Sean first heard about Moonhack from his honours teacher at school. He decided to take on the challenge along with a small group of students.
Sean’s project for Protect the Planet was determined as the winning entry by our panel of judges. The project maintained the theme of the original game and took some of the extension ideas to create an engaging, multi-leveled game. Sean said that some of his inspiration came from other games that he liked to play as well as being inspired by other coders who share many Scratch tutorials like griffpatch.
The judging panel commented that, “(Sean has) successfully maintained the look and feel of Moonhack but has taken the project so much further. Great to see some references to other projects and space inventions in the tutorial too.” They also spoke highly of the smooth animations, user interface, and the overall engaging aspect of playing the game.
Have you had a chance to play Sean’s game? To start the game a player clicks the start button. From here they have an option to view the tutorial. The tutorial is clear about how to play the game, the ability to toggle details on the screen, how to be a winner, and also gives some information about how the computer mouse was designed for space travel!
Once the game begins it’s a test of skill to aim and hit the star-shaped aliens before they reach the building. As aliens reach the building it slowly deteriorates before being completely broken and ending the game. If you earn enough money, you can upgrade your shooting system to have a better chance at protecting the planet, although the tutorial will warn you that it isn’t as accurate!
When chatting with Sean about his game he talked through some of the obstacles of coding this project and how he worked to overcome these. He said that getting the auto guns to work was his biggest hurdle, and this meant some concise and creative coding using variables as the solution.
Sean is looking forward to taking part in Moonhack this year, and also the challenge of moving from block-based to text-based coding. Congratulations on your winning entry Sean!
Happy coding.
Kaye
Code Club Australia
