World Creativity and Innovation Day: Unleashing Imagination with Code

This week we celebrated World Creativity and Innovation Day and, with that in mind, we want to share some of the ways in which learning to code can also lead to the development of strong creative skills. If you want to add a certain feature to your game, there’s often multiple different ways to build the code which means that growing comfortable with trying new ideas and creative problem solving is essential for coding success. Plus, these skills are super transferable so even if you’re not aiming to be a game developer, you’ll still benefit from learning to utilise them!

From designing new assets for their games to coming up with new ways to fix bugs, our community of coders are always exercising their creative muscles. Let’s take a closer look at the ways our mentors encourage creativity…

Designing new assets

Every single week, our members are encouraged to customise the weekly game and transform it into something new. One of the best ways to do this is by changing the assets within the game, and our mentors are always blown away by the creativity of our members. Want to design some of your own original characters? How about adding some new Minecraft themed designs? All of this is possible when you work on our featured games!

Customising assets isn’t just great for exercising your artistic muscles, it also leads to the development of crucial technical skills. Members working in Scratch, for example, learn to use tools that are incredibly similar to those found in photo editing software such as Photoshop. This means that learning to code at a young age can lead to a range of useful technical skills that are essential for a range of different careers, not just game development!

Fixing bugs

As you progress at The Code Zone, you’ll begin moving up through our levelling system and eventually we’ll start asking you to fix small bugs in the weekly games! Knowing how to fix problems in your code is an essential skill for all programmers which is why it’s so important for our community of coders to get comfortable reading code and finding solutions.

There are often multiple different ways to fix these bugs which means that members are free to test out solutions while still being supported by our STEM-Certified mentors if they get stuck. By reading and understanding the code, our members can then go on to create their own unique games as they’ll possess the ability to troubleshoot their code if they run into bugs!

Creating new hacks

Every week, we provide our members with a selection of Guided Hacks and Boosts that show our members how to make some big changes to their games. As you progress, you’ll develop enough skills to begin coming up with your own hacks as well!

Want to keep track of your high scores in game? How about giving the entire game a cool flashing rainbow effect? Keen to give your character superpowers? The possibilities are endless, and our mentors are always on hand to help if you get stuck!

As you can see, bringing creativity and coding together is incredibly important to all of us here at The Code Zone and our mentors are always keen to encourage new and interesting ideas in clubs. Ready to try for yourself in one of our live online clubs? Request a FREE taster session today!

Happy coding!