Half Term Game Jam Round Up

Last week, we kicked off our latest Game Jam for this half-term called Back To Front! For those who are new to The Code Zone, the Game Jam provides an opportunity for our coders to make their own games and animations based on a theme; this one being Back to Front. Members of our live clubs get to work on their games during club time with the help of their mentor, and our mentors are also accessible through the chat for those who need a hand outside of club time. 

We still have the rest of the week left of our Game Jam but we have already seen some AMAZING entries from our talented young coders that we couldn't wait to share them. So here are some of our mentor's favourite Game Jam games in no particular order... 

Dino Run - Made in Scratch by Oscar S
Oscar used the Back to Front base game that we provided and added his own twist to make the game his own. He replaced Zonebot with a dinosaur sprite and added not one, not two... but three different obstacles! Each one is coded to be progressively harder than the one before it. In addition, he also coded some coins into the game as a means to get even more points on top of the ones the Dino was achieving for surviving the obstacles. Awesome job! 

Flippy Bird - Made in Scratch by Mason
Mason made an amazing game which centres around a bird trying to keep up with an airplane! We absolutely love the opening title screen which has working buttons as well as animations whether the mouse scrolls over it. There's also an extra section for instructions - as Mason modified the base game to have brand new controls unique to his game. It is a tough game to play but well worth a try!

Rocket Escape - Made in Scratch by Oscar H 
Oscar changed his game to be space themed where the story revolves around an Astronaut who has gone rogue! The team in the rocket are determined to get him back to Earth however thee Astronaut wants to collect as many stars as possible. The more stars the Astronaut collects, the more points he gets - however if he gets caught by the rocket ship it is game over. 


Nom Nom - Made in Make Code by Kieran
Kieran decided to go for a jungle theme in this game - where we have a monkey trying to out run a snake. Kieran took it a step further by not only changing the sprites, but also animating them to make the game more unique. In addition, he added a health system so that the monkey has a better chance of surviving against a snake strike - we love health mechanics in games! 

Frogger - Made in Make Code by Austin
What do Frogs hate the most? Well according to Austin it is lemons! Austin's game centred around a monster truck driving frog who is blazing through the desert avoiding lemons being hurdle their way! The custom pixleart drawings are a sight to behold! Plus, there's a cool power up mechanic which utilises a status bar that once it is filled gives the frog the ability to be immune to the lemons - how cool is that!

Boss Battle - Made in Make Code by Joshua
Our young coder Joshua decided that the base game was TOO easy... so in his Game Jam entry, he decided to add a brand new enemy in the form of a boss battle! He had tweaked the code so that once the player reached 5000 points, that a Boss would appear in addition to the obstacles that needed to be dodge. In addition, this boss also did rando surprise attacks to the player making the game even harder; we love a challenge! 

With that, we reach the end of our mid Game Jam showcase. We’ve seen amazing games across the board so it was really hard to choose just five, well done to everyone who has taken part so far! If you want to play some of the games yourself then just visit the Game Jam tab on the dashboard to check out all of the games from past Jams.

Want to get involved? There’s still time to get stuck into the Game Jam, it’s free for anyone to join! We can’t wait to see what else our coders come up with, until next time…

Happy coding!