How To Create A Flappy Bird Game

Today you're going to find out how to make a Flappy Bird in Scratch! We'll show you how to control the bird with the space key, build moving pillars, and update the score every time the bird flies through them. Keep reading to see how to build your game.

If you enjoy creating games, be sure to check out our Scratch coding for kids classes and our Scratch coding club for kids. By the way, we also have a special fun Scratch snowball game class right now for the holidays.

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Here's how to make a flappy bird in Scratch

Just follow these steps to create a game you're going to love playing! See the finished version here.

1. Pick a character

The first thing we want to do is pick a sprite. We recommend choosing one with two costumes so it looks like the sprite will move across the screen. We chose the parrot. We want to make sure the parrot is small enough to fly through the pillars. Set the "Size" of the sprite in the lower right corner to 30.

2. Add the code for the "flappy" motion

Our next step is to code the "flappy" motion for the parrot with Scratch coding. So click on the parrot icon in the lower right corner to make sure you are adding blocks in the correct location.

Start with the "when green flag clicked" block from Events. Then get "forever" from Control since we want the flappy motion as long as the game is going. Inside "forever", place the "if/then/else" block from Control.

The flappy motion is controlled by the space bar: each time the user hits the space bar the bird goes up. We want the condition for the if statement to be the Sensing block "when space key pressed".

If this is the case, we want the bird to go up. We can use the "change y by" Motion block and set the number to 20. We also want the bird to look like it is flying, so after we change y, we want to use the "switch costume to parrot-b" Looks block.

The else condition indicates what happens if we do not press the space bar. Then the parrot should start to fall a bit. To do this, underneath the else part of the block, we need the "change y by -5" Motion block. We still want to make it look like the parrot is flying, so we want to use the "switch costume to parrot-a" Looks block to alternate costumes.

3. Create the pillars that the bird will fly through

Our next step is to make the pillars for the parrot to fly through. We will do this by making a custom sprite. Hover over the circle in the bottom right corner for adding a sprite, and select the option (third from the top) that looks like a paintbrush.

Use the "rectangle" icon from the last option in the first row to draw a pillar sprite. See below how we placed two long vertical rectangles and two short horizontal rectangles to make our pillars.

4. Make a background for the end of the game

Let's also make a new custom background that indicates the end of the game. Similar to how we created a custom sprite, hover over the circle in the bottom right corner for adding a background, and select the option (third from the top) that looks like a paintbrush. Use the "text" option in the second column to display a message to the user that the game has ended.

5. End the game if the bird touches the pillars

Click on the pillars sprite so we can add some code for it. The first thing we want to do is stop the game if the pillar touches the parrot. We start with a "when green flag clicked" block from Events. Underneath that we add a "forever" block from Control.

Since we always want to check if the parrot has collided with the pillar, we put an "if/then" block from Control inside "forever". The condition for the if statement is the Sensing block "touching Parrot". Make sure you change the dropdown choice if needed to reflect that the pillars and your sprite are touching.

When this happens, we want to use the Looks block "switch backdrop to backdrop2" to indicate that the game has ended and use the Control block "stop all".

6. Take care of details for starting and ending the game

Let's go back to the parrot code and make some changes based on our new backdrop. We want to add another Events block: "when backdrop switches to backdrop2". Then we want to attach the "hide" Looks block since we don't want anything displayed once the game has ended.

Between the "when green flag clicked" and "forever" blocks we added before, we need a bit more code. First we want the "show" Looks block which makes sure we have the parrot at the start of each game. Then we want another Looks block "switch backdrop to backdrop1". This will remove the backdrop for the end of the game.

Afterwards we want the "go to x/y" Motion block. This will set the starting location of the parrot. The specific coordinates are not important, but make sure the parrot starts on the left side of the screen and somewhere in the middle vertically. We set x to -190 and y to 30.

The remaining code is for adding additional features to the pillars so click on that sprite to add more blocks there. Just like with the parrot, we want the pillars to disappear when the game ends. We can do this with the same blocks: "when backdrop switches to backdrop2" and "hide".

We also want to show the pillars when the game starts, so place the "show" Looks block between the "when green flag clicked" and "forever" blocks we added before.

7. Get the pillars to move across the screen

Our next task is to get the pillars to move across the screen. Since we started with the pillars on the right side, we will make them move left. Let's get a "when green flag clicked" block from Events and a "forever" block from Control. We want the pillars to move as long as the game is still going.

Inside "forever", we want a "go to x/y" Motion block. This will set the original position of our pillars. To start the blocks on the right size, we set x to 180 and y to 28. Afterwards, we need a Motion block to execute the movement. Choose "glide to x/y". We set the time to 2.5 seconds, but feel free to play around with this number. The x value needs to be on the far left. Once the pillars reach this point, they will loop back around to the right. We set x to -280. Since our pillars are only moving horizontally, we don't want the y value to change at all. To ensure this is the case, we can drag the "y position" Motion block into the y space.

8. Create a score variable

The final step is to keep track of the score, similar to how we did in the flying cat game tutorial. Go to the Variables tab, click "Make a Variable" and name it "Score". Get a "when green flag clicked" Events block since we will keep track of the score as soon as the game starts. The first Variables block we want is "Set Score to 0". This will reset the score at the start of each game. You may need to adjust the dropdown option to ensure that it is "Score". Then get the two Control blocks "forever" and put "if/then" inside it.

The condition for the if statement is when the parrot has flown through the pillars. The parrot only moves vertically and not horizontally, so we know the parrot will have flown through if the pillars move past the parrot's location. In the if condition, we can detect that by using the "<" Operators block. The left space will be the "x position" block from Motion, and then on the right we put -190. This will check when the pillars have moved past the parrot's x location.

Inside the if/then statement, we want the "change Score by 1" Variables block. We want to increase the score every time the parrot makes it through! Right after, we also want the "wait 1 second" Control block to make sure the score only updates once every time the parrot flies through.

And that's it! We hope you enjoyed building your flappy bird.

Now you know how to make a flappy bird in Scratch!

We hope you have fun playing your new game! Feel free to customize your game with different characters and play around with backgrounds and themes. Check out our Scratch coding for kids upcoming classes below to learn how to build other cool games. Or try your hand at our Scratch pong game tutorial.

Written by Sophie Andrews, a Create & Learn instructor. Sophie Andrews is a student at Stanford University studying Math andComputational Sciences. She loves teaching and is a teaching assistant for Stanford's introductory computer science classes. Her work focuses on data science. Last year she built the online National Vote Trackers for The Cook Political Report, and she currently leads the Data Team at The Stanford Daily. She's also interned with the FCC and the National Renewable Energy Lab.