You can relive the excitement of a good marble maze game -- such as Labyrinth or Marble Madness -- right on your PyBadge or PyGamer, thanks to the built-in accelerometer! Use MakeCode Arcade to code it and then you can build your own challenging levels to test your skills!

Parts

MakeCode Arcade

MakeCode Arcade is a free Microsoft block programming environment designed specifically to make games. Learning to use MakeCode is easy & fun.

If you're not already familiar with the basics of MakeCode Arcade, check out this guide on creating a character sprite and moving it with controls.

To start, open a new Chrome browser window (Chrome works best) and go to MakeCode Arcade.

These MakeCode Arcade guides are designed to take you through the fundamentals before tackling more complex games:

• Pixel Art
• Animation
• Level Design
• Sparky Invaders
• Next Level Game Techniques

For intermediate-level techniques, check out:

• Re-MakeCode the Classics: Arkanoid
• Re-MakeCode the Classics: Py Hunter

Marble Labyrinth

To start with, let's load the completed version of Marble Labyrinth and try it out.

Start by launching MakeCode Arcade using the Google Chrome web browser. Then, download the arcade-Marble-Labyrinth.png image cartridge file above by right-clicking on the image and saving it to your computer.

Play the Game

Try out the game before we look at how it works. You can simply hover the mouse over the simulator window to "tilt" the game console around to play.

Here's a minimum viable example of using the accelerometer to move a ball around the screen:

Intro Tutorial

One popular concept in game design is the notion of teaching the player how to play the game by doing, rather than including step-by-step instructions, or requiring a manual.

We'll use this method to get the player used to the tilting mechanic, and so that they have a feel for how much to tilt the PyGamer before the stakes are high.

In the intro to the game, the title "Marble Labyrinth" is pinned to the ball using the sprite say " " block, and there are no hazards. So, players will naturally tilt the ball around with the controller and eventually try crossing over the green "F" for "Finish" block, which advances them to the first real level.

Fall in a Hole

Just like the original, real-world game, Marble Labyrinth is hard! When the player over-corrects and steers the ball right into a hole, here's what happens:

• on sprite of kind Player hits wall (pink) loop runs
• We set the touched variable to true to disengage the accelerometer control
• set sprite image to blank so that it appears that the ball has fallen into the hole
• set dropped to true which will call the game over lose with bubbles effect in the forever loop

Completing a Level/Winning the Game

When the player gets the ball to the Finish tile, here's what happens:

• on sprite of kind Player hits wall (green) lets us know the ball has reached the finish
• disengage the accelerometer control over the ball with set touched to true
• change levelNumber by 1 increases the integer value that's used to call the makeLevel function with the proper next level number
• if levelNumber < length of array list conditional loop checks to see that we have additional levels left for the player. If so:
  • pause half a second, then call the makeLevel function with the next level number
• If there are no levels left to play:
  • game over win with smiles effect !

Now, load the game onto your PyGamer or PyBadge as shown in the following pages and have some fun! Any time you like, you can create new levels to create new challenges!