Timers and state

Everything from this month comes together now: sprites, events, loops, conditions and variables, in one working game.

You're building Catch the Falling Objects — a basket at the bottom, things falling from the top, points for catches, lives for misses.

It's a small game. It's also a complete one, with a beginning, a way to win and a way to lose. That's more than most first projects ever get.

Adding a countdown sounds advanced. It's a variable and a loop:

set [timer] to 30
repeat until <timer = 0>
    wait 1 seconds
    change [timer] by -1

That's a 30-second countdown. repeat until is a third kind of loop — it keeps going until a condition becomes true, which is exactly the shape you need here.

A timer changes the whole feel of a game. The same catching game with 30 seconds on the clock is far more exciting than the same one without.