Stage 10: Meme App Jam
Keep your Scratch project tab open all week. Open in a new tab so you don’t leave the course.
your own app that mixes tricks from all three apps
how to combine clicks, sounds, pitch, variables, and broadcasts into one project
a personal Meme App you demo to the room
Today there's no new block — it's a jam. Show one combo to spark ideas, then set them loose:
- Open the Cookie Clicker. Make a variable nextLaughAt, set it to 10, then add an if check on the cookie: when cookies reaches nextLaughAt, play a squeaky laugh and raise nextLaughAt by 10.
- Point out: that's a clicker (App 3) + a recorded sound (App 1) + the pitch effect (App 2), all in one.
- Tell the room the rule: pick any of your three projects and bolt on at least one trick from a different app. Make it yours. Then we demo.
The big idea
You've built three apps and a whole toolbox to go with them. Today you stop following steps and start making — this is a jam, where you remix your own tricks into something nobody else will have.
There's no new block to learn. Instead, look at everything you already own:
- Clicks that run things (App 1) — when this sprite clicked
- Your own recorded sounds (App 1) — the memes
- The pitch effect (App 2) — chipmunk and monster voices
- Broadcasts (App 2) — buttons that send messages to a brain sprite
- Variables (App 3) — numbers your app remembers
- if/then (App 3) — decisions
- Forever loops (App 3) — things that happen on their own
A real app is just several of these working together. Your job today: pick one of your three projects and combine at least one trick from a different app into it. Then give it a title screen and demo it.
If you need a silly starting point, use one of the course's example-meme ideas: a dramatic banana slip, a sleepy cloud yawn, a tiny trumpet womp, a crumb-boss victory laugh, a confused blob saying "wait what?", or a bright BONK. Those examples are original to this course. Your final app should still sound and look like you made it.
- remix
- combine things you already made into something new
- jam
- a free build where you make your own thing
- title screen
- the opening look that names your app
- demo
- showing your app to other people and explaining it
All three apps should be saved in My Stuff: your Soundboard, your Voice Changer, and your Cookie Clicker. Pick the one you want to remix — or start a fresh project that borrows from all three.
Build it
There's no single right build today. Pick a starting project and add at least one cross-app trick. Here's a menu of combos — steal any of them or invent your own.
Combo A — A clicker that laughs (App 3 + App 1 + App 2)
Make your cookie play a pitched-up version of your own laugh each time it reaches the next 10-cookie milestone.
First make a new variable named nextLaughAt. Add it to your green-flag setup:
Remember the next laugh milestone
when green flag clicked set [cookies v] to (0) set [clickPower v] to (1) set [cookiesPerSecond v] to (0) set [nextLaughAt v] to (10) clear sound effects
Then update the cookie click script:
Laugh at each 10-cookie milestone
when this sprite clicked change [cookies v] by (clickPower) if <(cookies) > ((nextLaughAt) - (1))> then set [pitch v] effect to (100) start sound (mylaugh v) change [nextLaughAt v] by (10) end
Record a mylaugh sound first. The nextLaughAt variable starts at 10, then jumps to 20, 30, 40, and so on after each laugh. That means the combo still works even if clickPower skips from 9 to 11.
Combo B — A soundboard that keeps score (App 1 + App 3)
Add a clicks variable to your Soundboard. Every button does change [clicks] by (1) along with its sound. Show the readout — now your soundboard counts how many memes you've fired. Add an if/then that broadcasts a "combo!" sound at 25.
Combo C — A voice changer with a button-press counter and milestone (App 2 + App 3)
On your Voice Changer's Voice sprite, count how many times any effect was used, and broadcast a special "you found them all" message after, say, 20 presses. Variables + broadcasts you already know.
Combo D — Your own idea
Mix anything. A clicker where the upgrade button is a recorded "cha-ching!". A soundboard where a forever loop makes a button wiggle. Whatever makes you laugh.
Add a title screen
Whatever you pick, give it an opening look. Add a sprite, draw a banner with the text tool, and write your app's name and your name. Place it on the green flag with a go to so it greets players every run.
A title screen makes it feel finished
The difference between "a school project" and "an app" is often just the first three seconds. A title screen — your app's name, your name, a fun color — tells anyone who opens it what this is and who made it. It costs you five minutes and makes the whole thing feel real. Don't skip it before the demo.
Save and get demo-ready
Save your project. Then practice your demo once: open it, run it, and be ready to say one sentence about a choice you made — "I made every 10th cookie laugh because milestones should feel like a reward."
Understand it
Everything you built this week was a pattern, and patterns combine. A clicker plus a recorded sound plus a pitch effect isn't three separate things — it's one app where your tools cooperate. That's the real secret the whole course was teaching: big apps aren't made of big ideas, they're made of small, familiar pieces stacked in new ways. You already have the pieces.
Being able to explain a choice is what separates a maker from a button-masher. You didn't just add a laugh — you added it on milestones, because rewards should feel earned. Real designers defend their decisions like that. At the demo, the why behind your app is more impressive than the app itself.
And notice what you can do now that you couldn't ten stages ago: you can look at a goofy idea in your head — "a cookie that laughs in my voice every ten clicks" — and actually build it, choosing the right blocks yourself. That's not following a worksheet. That's coding.
Try this
Try this
Three short experiments. Predict before you run, then test your guess.
Before you build your combo, predict which three tools from your toolbox it will use. Write them down. After you build it, check — did you use the ones you expected, or did you reach for others?
Show your app to a friend and try theirs. What did they combine that you didn't think of? Borrow one idea from their app into yours. Makers learn fastest by remixing each other.
You started this week clicking other people's apps. Now you've made three. What's the next app you'd build if camp kept going — and which tools from this week would it need? You already know enough to start it.
Level up
Use this as your mini design brief before the demo:
- Level 1 — The joke. Write the one-sentence joke of your app: "The cookie laughs every time it hits a milestone."
- Level 2 — The surprise. Add one moment the player does not expect: a sound, a costume swap, a score milestone, or a celebration.
- Level 3 — The reset. Press the green flag three times in a row. Your app should start clean every time, with no leftover pitch, hidden title, or weird score.
Debug mission
Trade apps with a partner for two minutes. Do not explain anything. If they do not know what to click first, add a label, title hint, or better layout. If they break it, write down exactly which part needs a reset or guard.
Test your stage
- You picked a project and added at least one trick from a different app.
- Your combo actually works when you run it from the green flag.
- Your app has a title screen with its name and your name.
- Your final app has one clear meme moment: a joke idea, a custom sound or caption, and a visual payoff.
- You can say one sentence explaining a choice you made.
- A partner can figure out what to click first without instructions.
- All three of your apps are saved in My Stuff.
- Design check. Hand your app to the person next to you with no instructions. Can they figure out how to use it and tell what's fun about it? If not, add a label or a title hint.
If it breaks
- My combo block does nothing. Build it in tiny pieces and test each one. Add the if/then alone first, then the sound, then the pitch — test after each, so you know exactly which piece broke.
- The laugh never triggers. Check that nextLaughAt starts at 10 on the green flag, and that the condition reads cookies > nextLaughAt - 1. If nextLaughAt is blank or 0, reset it on the green flag.
- A leftover pitch effect made everything squeaky. Effects stick (you knew this from App 2). Add clear sound effects on the green flag, or right after your pitched sound.
- My title screen covers the app. Give it a go to spot at the top, or have it hide after a couple seconds: wait (2) seconds → hide.
- I broke something that used to work. Open My Stuff — your earlier saves are still there. Worst case, you can always go back to a working version. This is why we saved often all week.
This is the celebration stage — protect its time, never squeeze it. The goal isn't a perfect app; it's every kid finishing the week proud, with something they chose and can explain.
Keep the bar honest and reachable: one cross-app trick + a title screen is a complete, demo-worthy jam. The combo menu (A–D) exists so nobody stares at a blank screen — point hesitant kids at Combo A or B and let confident ones invent. Resist the urge to push everyone toward the fanciest option; a working simple remix beats an ambitious broken one at the demo.
Reserve the last 20–30 minutes for the parent demo. The format that works: each kid opens one app, runs it, and says one sentence about a choice they made. Rehearse that sentence today — it's the single thing that makes a demo feel like a presentation instead of a screen-share.
The celebration medium stretch is a great universal add — almost everyone can drop in a milestone payoff, and it makes demos land. The confetti clones hard stretch is only for kids who already conquered Stage 9's clones; treat it as a victory lap, not an expectation.
End the week by naming what they learned, not just what they built: clicks, recordings, pitch, broadcasts, variables, if/then, loops — the same ideas inside every app on their phone at home. They didn't play apps this week. They built them.