Broadcast Messages

🟨🐱 Broadcasting and Receiving Messages in Scratch

Send messages and make cool things happen in the right order!

🧰 What Is This?

Broadcast and receive blocks let parts of your Scratch project communicate. You can tell one sprite or backdrop to do something when another one triggers it — like sending a message behind the scenes.

Perfect for:

Changing scenes
Triggering animations
Making characters talk in order
Starting mini-games or challenges

You can even say,

“Hey! Do your thing — then tell me when you’re done!”

That’s what Broadcast and Wait is for!

🧩 The Blocks

broadcast [message1]
Sends a message and moves on to the next block straight away.
broadcast [message1] and wait
Sends a message, but pauses until everything listening to that message finishes.
when I receive [message1]
Starts a script when the message is heard.

🧠 Tip: You can create custom messages by clicking the dropdown and selecting “new message…”

🎮 Try This Example – Synchronized Talking

Let’s have Cat and Penguin talk...

Add the Penguin sprite.
Cat’s code:

message-1

Penguin’s code:

message-2

✅ Because Cat uses broadcast and wait, she waits for Penguin to finish before speaking again!

💡 Handy Tips

Use broadcast and wait when the sender needs to pause until the message is finished being handled.
Use plain broadcast when things can happen in parallel or you don’t need to wait.
You can broadcast the same message to many sprites!

🔍 Use It In…

Scene changes with loading animations
Mini-games inside larger projects
Dialogue sequences
Reaction chains (like a domino effect!)

🔍 Look For This In Projects

Scene changes in story games
Start Game buttons
Ending animations
Surprises after challenges

🎨 Make It Fun!

Broadcast a message like "party time" and have sprites dance when they receive it!
Create a mini dungeon crawler where characters show when the player enters their part of the "dungeon"