Game Dev: Hackers – Midweek Showcase!

Well hey there, coders and parents! Our weekly game this week is ‘Parcel Panic’ – a game that’ll have you multitasking, matching colours, and scoring points like nobody’s business! If you haven’t already seen some of our members playing it, here’s a rundown: 4 different colours of packages are constantly travelling down a set of conveyor belts, and we need to sort each package into the correct coloured box, for a neat 100 points each. But we have to be careful, as if any of them reach the end of the belt without being sorted, we’ll lose 100 points (and a perfectly good parcel!!). As a result, we need to keep our eyes on those conveyor belts at all times, and keep passing the parcels until the timer runs out – talk about a high stakes job!

But for our Midweek Showcase, we wanted to show you some of the unique twists that our members have put on this week’s game. After all, the game is fun by itself – but is it really a proper project if you haven’t hacked it?! Let’s jump in and have a look at some of the amazing mechanical and visual changes in the games we’ve seen so far! In no particular order:

1)    Ariel – “NOT EASY TO NOT PANIC”

The first game in our Midweek Showcase is from Ariel! She has made a fantastic version of this week’s game, by completely overhauling the visuals to make it MINECRAFT THEMED! Not only that, but Ariel has added in this week’s Guided Hack, which was to add an ability that allowed us to auto-sort the parcels for a few seconds after pressing the space bar – but only after we’d been patient and let it charge. However the coolest part (in my opinion) has to be the epic speed boost that Ariel has added to the packages – to match the custom name of her project – NOT EASY NOT TO PANIC – Ariel has made it so that the packages move along the conveyor belt FIVE TIMES QUICKER!! It’s a super challenge to try and grab those speeding boxes – huge well done to her this week!

 

1)     Ellis – A Hyper-realistic Remake!

Next we have Ellis’ game for this week – Ellis has decided to completely remake this week’s sprites by using real-world images of the different objects in our game. Cartoon packages have become pictures of real cardboard boxes, with coloured stripes to help us sort them, and the conveyor belts have been replaced with realistic ones too! It gives the game a really ‘HD’ feel – and any gamer can attest that in video games, good graphics are king! Not only that, but Ellis has added in the Guided Hack for this week, as well as Boost 1, which was to add a high score counter into the game. Massive well done to Ellis!

1)    Finn – An out-of-this-world hack!

Finn’s game is next in our showcase. He’s taken us to the furthest reaches of space this week with his game, masterfully changing the visuals and adding some awesome coding changes too! Firstly, Finn has changed all the different coloured packages to something a little more interesting; instead of boring boxes, we’re sorting the cosmos itself!! We’ve got to put Trees, Clouds, The Sun and even Earth itself into the right boxes, but Finn has cleverly changed the boxes’ colours so they better match his new designs. And all this while also enjoying that amazing milky way background. If we use the Guided Hack that Finn put into his game, we can even sort the universe automatically! So much power… brilliant job Finn!!

1)    Genyune – “Shape Panic”

Now we’re onto Genyune’s game, the perfectly named ‘Shape Panic’! Genyune decided this week that sorting parcels is just plain old boring. So she’s changed the game to be one about sorting shapes instead! That’s the beauty of our Game Dev clubs – if you’re not a fan of the base game, you can change it be whatever you want! Genyune masterfully designed her visuals so that we have to drag the shapes (that are moving x10 faster may I add!!!) into the boxes that have been replaced with matching shapes too. However, she didn’t just make these awesome changes; she also added in her Guided Hack, and ALL THREE BOOSTS! That means she had a highscore counter, an animated conveyor belt, AND a special rainbow package that could be put into any box! She put in so much hard work this week, clearly – and as the cherry on top, the rainbow package has been replaced by a flashing multi-coloured star shape. I’m speechless!!!

 

1)      Sam – An elemental adventure!

And last but certainly not least, we’ll share with you Sam’s game this week. Sam did an awesome job with both his coding and visual changes, making our game themed around the elements, and it’s our job to sort them! The powers of Fire, Earth, Water and Electricity all united today on a fantastic rainbow conveyor belt, and even the mysterious rainbow cube made an appearance – that’s Boost number 2! I wonder if that rainbow package somehow holds all the powers of the elements combined… I’d peek inside and see, but this is starting to sound like Pandora’s Box!! Either way, the amazing drawings and code in Sam’s game this week look great, so super well done to him!

That concludes our Midweek Showcase for today. It was so amazing seeing all these brilliant games! Of course, there are just so many members to choose from that it was super difficult to choose who to show off – the games are ALL so good, but we’ve only got space for a few of them! This blog post could go on for miles… but I think your eyes would hurt from reading. A huge well done to all our hackers who have had clubs so far, for your hard work and amazing designs – keep up the good work all of you, and maybe it’ll be your game being shown off soon! See you all next time!