Space Invaders made with Scratch

A fun, engaging Scratch project that introduces pupils to game design and programming through creating their own retro-style Space Invaders game!

This step-by-step teaching resource guides pupils through building a playable Space Invaders game using Scratch. Designed for primary school pupils and beginner coders, the project helps children develop essential programming skills while creating something exciting they can play and share.

What Will Pupils Learn?

Throughout the lessons, pupils will learn how to:

Control sprites using keyboard inputs to move a spaceship left and right.

Create a shooting mechanism that allows the spaceship to fire lasers.

Use coordinates to position and move sprites around the screen.

Program enemy movement to make aliens move across the screen and descend.

Use loops and conditional statements to control how the game behaves.

Detect collisions between sprites to trigger a Game Over event.

Use broadcasts to communicate between sprites and control game events.

Test and debug code to identify problems and improve their game.

Why Is This a Great Teaching Resource?

Space Invaders is an ideal project for introducing pupils to key programming concepts in a fun, practical way.

Rather than simply copying code, pupils can see how different programming blocks work together to create a functioning game.

The resource includes clear, illustrated, step-by-step worksheets, making it suitable for teachers with limited Scratch experience as well as more confident computing teachers.

Pupils develop computational thinking, logical reasoning, problem-solving and creativity as they build their games.

Suitable For

KS2 Computing lessons

Scratch beginners and developing coders