Under the guidance of instructor Tim McGuire, students in Newtown Continuing Education’s Introduction to Computer Programming Using Scratch 2.0 worked on Wednesday, July 22, to create computer games.

Mr McGuire said the camp, which has been offered before, drew 15 students this year, and a number of them were returning campers from previous years or from other computer camps offered this summer. The camp ran from July 20 to July 24.

During the Introduction to Computer Programming Using Scratch 2.0, the students used Scratch, a computer programming software developed by the MIT Media Lab, to design games or animations.

By Wednesday the campers had been working on their game creations for a few days.

Mr McGuire said he had the students begin by working on games and animated stories, which included characters with dialogue. So far Mr McGuire said students had created tag games or avoidance games on computers at Reed Intermediate School, where the camp was held.

“I’m always impressed by their creativity, as far as the ideas they have go,” said Mr McGuire, about the range of games the students were creating.

This year’s camp also included some newer software, according to Mr McGuire, and some new hardware, like a controller the students could learn to use. Mr McGuire said he was also working to include math problems for the older or more advanced students in the camp. Challenges offered to campers included “debugging” problems, which Mr McGuire said asked the students to fix already created computer programs.

Inside the computer classroom on Wednesday, campers Perry Ghosh, a rising seventh grader, and Mitchell Schrader, a rising sixth grader, were working together on a game.

“We’re programming... all the sprites,” said Mitchell said, explaining that each character on the screen was being programmed to move around the game.

The first player in Mitchell and Perry’s game acted as a “Batmobile” to move around and catch bats on the screen.

“You just have to let your imagination free,” said Perry, speaking about the course and the different ideas he had for games.

Mitchell said he had already finished creating another game by that Wednesday.

“It’s awesome,” Mitchell said about the camp, “because it is cool. You get to program and use your imagination to make a game you want to make.”

At another computer, Malcolm Zimmerman, a rising fifth grader, said he was working on his “Cat vs Dog” game, in which the first player is challenged to catch a dog while playing as a cat.

“It is more challenging than it looks,” warned Malcolm.

Camper Shawn Roller, a rising sixth grader, said the camp was fun because he had the ability to make games and movies.

More information about Newtown Continuing Education’s program offerings is available at summersmartcampct.org.