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I tried Hopscotch, the surprisingly powerful app that lets you make small games without coding

Hopscotch is colorful and fun right from the start. Creating a profile takes a minute, then you're able to get to the app's main menu.

I tried Hopscotch, the surprisingly powerful app that lets you make small games without coding

You're given the choice to make your own games, or play others. Before hopping into the creation tools, I decided to see what others had made, to get an idea of how powerful the tools were.

You

Turns out they're pretty powerful. Enough to create clones of Doodle Jump...

Turns out they

... And Slither.io. These versions aren't as polished as their professionally made counterparts, but they get the basic mechanics down near-perfectly.

... And Slither.io. These versions aren

This is Hopscotch's creation interface. The first thing you need to do is select an object: I started by selecting a shape. You can also choose to preview and play your game at any point.

This is Hopscotch

Once you've selected an object (in this case I picked a heart) you can tell it when to perform an action, when it's tapped or pressed, for example.

Once you

Then you select what you want to have happen a person interacts with that object in that way. I decided to have the heart change color, and the cupcake spin and dance. The process is very intuitive.

Then you select what you want to have happen a person interacts with that object in that way. I decided to have the heart change color, and the cupcake spin and dance. The process is very intuitive.

You can create as many actions to one variable as you'd like. Once I had my variables in place it was time to see how the game looked.

You can create as many actions to one variable as you

The preview button creates a smaller-sized, but fully-interactive, version of your app. I decided mine needed some fine tuning.

The preview button creates a smaller-sized, but fully-interactive, version of your app. I decided mine needed some fine tuning.

For this game I decided to add some text, to give the player some guidance.

For this game I decided to add some text, to give the player some guidance.

Perfect. It's not going to win any awards, but it only took ten minutes for me to create a mini game with two fully interactive variables, without writing a line of code.

Perfect. It

And here it is in action!

And here it is in action!

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