Summer Game Jam Round Up!

Well then folks, the lovely summer bliss is coming to an end it seems, as the nights get darker and the leaves turn brown – the gentle flow of autumn is approaching! Soon we’ll all be enjoying the taste of pumpkin-flavoured-everything and getting out our thick coats. And with the end of the summer holidays, our big Game Jam season is over too! But don’t worry, we’ll be back with another Game Jam when things start to get really spooky, hint hint…

But now it’s time to send off the summer with a celebration of everything we’ve been up to in our Game Jams, and also a bit of appreciation for how great the Game Jams are for helping our members learn all about coding and improve their abilities! As a recap for our themes: Our first Game Jam of the summer was ‘Honey, I shrunk The Code Zone!’, where our members had to make games based around the theme of shrinking things down, or changing size in general. Then for the second half of the summer, we had the ‘Mascot Mayhem’ Game Jam that was all about, well, mascots of course – be they from sports, video games, or even the Olympics! Lots of our members had a go with the base game available to them, starting with a template with some basic code, then changing their games into custom challenges with the help of their trusty mentors – and others had a go coding in their games entirely from the ground up, which is a fantastic achievement!

We posted a couple of showcases during our Game Jams, though naturally we didn’t get a chance to show off every game despite how amazing they all were! If you can’t see your name here, then maybe go check out our mid-Game Jam showcases, you might be featured there! And so, because we loved ALL your games so much, we figured we’d give a quick shout-out to a few more that were shared with us after our showcases, or just didn’t make it into the first showcase. For the first summer Game Jam:

• - James’ hilarious ‘Meme Shrinker’ was a great time, allowing us to shrink down the characters from some classic memes!
• - Zack’s ‘Someone shrunk my school’ project had a fab story, and a great choice of setting!
• - Sam’s project was great, with a factory setting where we had to assemble vehicles using different mechanical pieces!
• - Theo’s story-driven point and click game featured some amazing animations for his characters!
• - Eliseus made a crazy game with awesome animated cutscenes!
• - Ellis made an amazing minecraft themed game where we shrunk zombies into baby zombies!
• And although we don’t have space to talk about all their games, we wanted to thank Harry, Dominic, Taisha, Shylah, Toby, Finnley, Leo, Thomas, Derryn, David, Runa, Oliver, Josh and Niall for their games too! And of course, to all of you who took part in the Game Jam clubs we hosted in the first week!

Now for our second and more recent Game Jam, here are some more games:

• - Toby made the fantastic ‘Olympic RPG Adventure’ which had some fantastic drawings and mechanics!
• - Taisha’s Hapless Hurdles was a super experience, with custom music and a brilliant choice of theme!
• - Alfie made a great project, that featured some very cool monster illustrations and cookies to collect!
• - Connor made an awesome Portal themed game, with text-to-speech narration and laser walls we had to dodge!
• - Izyan repped the mascot of the entire country of Wales in their game, the red dragon soaring majestically across the screen!
• - James made a fantastic underwater version of his game, with a rainbow octopus zooming around us!
• And although we don’t have space to list their games, we wanted to give a huge thank you also to Matt, Timi, Eliseus, Alen, Teddy, Alexander, Aoife, James, Jamie, Harrison, Simon, Rio, Ridley, Oliver, Josh and Isaac for all their amazing games. And again, to everyone who took part in our dedicated Game Jam clubs!

Well then, that’s a lot of names and a lot of games. But I think now it’s time to really remember just how fab these Game Jams are as an opportunity for learning – through play, just how we like to do it here at The Code Zone. Throughout the year our mentors work hard to show the members how to code through their various guided hacks, boosts, and helping troubleshoot bugs or engineer custom hacks from the brilliant minds of the members themselves – and over time, perhaps without even realising it, each one of these members learns more and more about the coding language they’re using, and gains a deeper understanding of how all the code pieces together. And really, these Game Jams are a perfect way for them to show off what they know – by leaving it open ended, with a theme to give some inspiration, they get to flex their coding muscles and put their abilities into practice! And as we can see, the results are astounding. Lots of our hackers and modders start out not knowing much at all about coding – and now, they’ve managed to make their own custom games, with complex animations and mechanics in many cases. What an achievement – we hope you’re as impressed as we are!

We’re so proud of you all, and we’re so glad that you’ve thrown yourself into the Game Jams this summer! Stay awesome, and keep coding!!!