Mid-Game Jam Showcase!

Hi again, coders and parents! As many of you may be aware, last week was the first week of our current GAME JAM – which, if you weren’t aware, is a two-week long opportunity for our members to make their VERY OWN, CUSTOM GAMES based around a preselected theme and share them with all their fellow members, being able play and give XP points to the ones they enjoy most! It’s fantastic fun, and this time around we’ve been focusing on the Game Jam for the first week in our clubs rather than letting it be a solely independent thing – which has meant we’ve already seen some amazing games already, and we’re only halfway through!!! It’s all very exciting. And what better way to celebrate that excitement, and also our members’ hard work, than through a showcase!!

For some critical context, our theme for the current Game Jam is ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Code Zone’ – aka, our members have been challenged to make games based around the theme of shrinking down, or otherwise changing size. This has led to some marvellous miniature mayhem, and without further ado, let’s get into them! In no particular order:

1)      Bram – ‘Platformer’

The first game in our showcase this week is from Bram! Bram has made a brilliant (and very advanced!) project completely by himself, which as the name suggests is a classic 2D platformer. In Bram’s game, we start playing as the iconic Scratch Cat – who has by chance decided to apply to work at The Code Zone, as his dialogue shows!! I personally would love to welcome him onto the team. However, the poor kitty suffers a sudden bit of bad luck, and becomes absolutely tiny – not a good start to his career as a mentor! We have to use the arrow keys to move him around and the space bar to jump over giant purple blocks, moving from one area to the next in the hopes we can find a way to get back to normal. It’s a brilliant adventure, and we love the story he’s put into it too! Super well done, Bram!!

  Xander – Spot the Basketballs!

Next up we have a stellar game from Xander. Xander decided to put a cool sports theme on his game for the Game Jam, firstly putting in an amazing basketball court background and following it up with a very determined looking basketball player. But even though it looks like we’re playing as a pro on the court, Xander’s game is still full of challenge!! The aim of the game is to click on the tiny, shrunken-down basketballs falling from the top of the screen. However, the challenge lies in the many other kinds of sports balls that are also falling down – constantly changing size from big to small! It’s a powerful distraction that hides those precious basketballs behind their size-shifting enemies, and certainly makes Xander’s game as cool as it is tricky! Awesome stuff from him!

3)      Arthur – King Target and his minions!

Arthur’s take on the Game Jam this week was also amazing! In Arthur’s game, we saw a gigantic target in the background, imposing and powerful with a crown resting on its head. And in the rest of the game, we were faced with legions of smaller targets, paying tribute to their Target King by taunting us with constant evil laughs – “Mwahahaha”s, to be precise! By clicking on the targets though, we were able to banish them, gain points, and prove that overconfidence is dangerous when you’re up against the main character!

4)      Ariel – ‘Goodnight!’

The next game in our showcase is an Uber-Cute one from Ariel. Ariel came up with the fantastic idea to give her Game Jam project a wholesome and adorable theme. She did this by making a game where you have to click on some very fashionable looking rabbits, and ‘shrink’ them down to make them into baby bunnies! These adorable bunnies then hopped over to their hutch where they went to bed, making it a calming game all about shrinking adult bunnies back into sleepy baby ones, a very creative way of using the shrinking theme with a unique twist. Fab job, Ariel!

5)      Sarvun – Aliens Attack!

And the last game featured in our mid-Game Jam is an awesome one from Sarvun. Sarvun loved the fact that our Game Jams aren’t just about games, but also a chance to try your hand at animation too! And so in the spirit of this, Sarvun designed an amazing opening cutscene for his game, where he is ambushed by a UFO, that attacks him with a shrinking ray in the blink of an eye! Shrunken down and in danger, we then have to click on the approaching enemies to try and survive as long as we can! It’s an epic adventure and the illustrations are absolutely awesome.

And unfortunately, that’s all we have time for today! As usual, it was so hard to pick which games to showcase (there’s just so many great choices), and don’t worry if yours didn’t make it – we’ll do more showcases again soon, and yours could be on that one, who knows. Just keep up the hard work with your coding. Remember that to play any of these games, you can click on the Game Jam tab and click on ‘past jams’ to view all the submissions for this Game Jam or any of the past ones, and even play the games that us mentors have made! Be sure to give your fellow coders an XP point too by clicking on the XP star icon. We hope you enjoy the last week of the Game Jam, and we’ll see you again soon!