International Day of Awesomeness

Well hello there, coders and parents!

We hope you’re having a lovely day. In fact, we hope you’re having an AWESOME day specifically – you might not know it, but on the 10^th of March every year, it’s none other than International Day of AWESOMENESS!!! Let me tell you, folks, I hadn’t heard of it until recently, but now I have, it’s getting a permanent place in my calendar. And with the date so quickly approaching, here at the code zone we wanted to show off some of the most mind-boggling and generally awesome projects our members have made, to not just celebrate a day dedicated to awesomeness, but also their hard work and creativity!

Of course, every one of our members have made tons of games that are definitely awesome, and if yours hasn’t appeared on this list then fear not – no doubt it’s also completely epic! But with so many to choose from, we can sadly only fit a few, and so keep up your coding and perhaps next year you’ll be starring here too! But without further ado, let’s see some positively, completely, absolutely AWESOME GAMES! In no particular order:

Mason – Flippy Bird

First off we’ve got a fantastic game from Mason! ‘Flippy Bird’ might sound quite familiar to some of you – a definite reference to the classic mobile game Flappy Bird, Mason’s version uses the same basic controls however gives it a super awesome twist. As Mason’s project was a submission to our latest Game Jam, with the theme of ‘Back-to-Front’, Flippy Bird includes a brilliant mechanic that lets us flip the direction of the bird, to ensure we’re not bumping into the edges of the screen. To keep our bird alive, we have to expertly press z to jump, and c to switch directions, timing each keystroke with precision, or gravity will teach us a painful lesson! We’ll also have to dodge all sorts of obstacles while we jump too.

But of course, the game’s main mechanics aren’t the only awesome part. Most notably, Mason has made a fantastic interactive menu screen for his game, using broadcasts to let us start our game by clicking on an on-screen button! And not only that, but the menu icons have a fun highlighting effect when we hover our mouse over them, which is the same sort of polish that we expect from professional video games – a fantastic detail!

And just when you couldn’t imagine the game being any awesome-er, Mason proves us wrong by also incorporating an animation for the bird when it flips direction, expertly using a clever animation technique known as ‘smear frames’ – basically, to show how quickly the bird switches, the animation for a split second looks like the bird has been stretched halfway between each side. Professional animators use this all the time, because it turns out the human brain fills in the gaps of what it sees, and it makes the animation look 10x smoother; you don’t even notice that it’s actually stretched out! Fantastic job, Mason – it’s AWESOME!

Connor – Zonebot tries to take over the world’s computers!

Next up on our list is a truly spectacular game from Connor! Connor made a series of games all about a corrupted version of The Code Zone’s beloved mascot, the Zonebot, and as the fourth entry in this series, this one really shows how amazing Connor’s coding and design skills are!

The game starts with a sinister text to speech intro from the corrupted Zonebot, whose design is covered in dark purple, sparkling antimatter. As he tells us his evil plan in typical villain fashion, we can even hear the voices in his head chanting his name in his own fantasy!! It’s a fantastic use of one of Scratch’s extensions, and very funny – if he wasn’t so goofy, I bet the corrupted Zonebot would be quite scary!

But when we get into the gameplay, the fun just increases. Connor’s game is based on the classic game Snake, and with our tail behind us we have to eat as many Glitch Particles as possible, to increase our corruption and hack even more of the world’s computers. But there’s a few extra bits we can interact with too – Connor has added some colour-changing portals that allow us to teleport all over the screen, as well as adding in an amazing anti-virus obstacle that will give us a game-over if we run into it, which is a great idea for a game with such a computery design!

And of course, Connor has gone one step further and added some custom backgrounds into his game, including an arrangement of wires in the World Computing Server for gameplay, and a custom game over screen that shows if our corrupted Zonebot gets purged by the anti-virus, stopping his evil plans for world domination. This is truly an awesome game – Well Done, Connor!

Zachary – Mirror Mirror

We have a really awesome game next up by Zachary! Zachary made a game that really blew my mind when I first played it, that revolves around the player interacting with a mirror that splits the screen into two halves. We play as a purple ball that follows our mouse pointer, and we have to move it onto a bunch of multi-coloured pods that give us points, and get as many as we can. However – it’s not that simple! You see, the purple ball we play as actually is NOT the ‘real’ one that can collect the pods – we play as the reflection!! This is the main challenge of the game – we have to move our mouse to the exact opposite side of the screen that the pod is on to collect it, which is just so impressive and a really creative challenge! Honestly, my mind was blown when I realised I could move my mouse to the other side of the screen and then collect pods on both sides!!

Additionally, Zachary has packed his game full of bonus details too. We have different pods that give us different amounts of points, and that display the amount after we grab them – we also have to be careful with our mouse and avoid the black hole in the centre. Not only that, but Zachary has also made it so that we can grab a power-up pod that makes everything flash in rainbow colours, and activates some groovy disco music – and that power-up pod just happens to have our lead mentor Tom’s avatar on it!! Lucky Tom – I think all the mentors dream of an in-game cameo!

And of course, Zachary also made a super cool game over screen when the timer runs out, that awards us a trophy (or no trophy, if you’re unlucky!) depending on how many points we got – I’ve managed to get a silver one so far, but maybe one day I’ll get gold! But one thing’s for sure – Zachary deserves a gold trophy for this game!

James – The Last Codemas

Now we’re onto James’ amazing Christmas themed game. James made this game for last year’s Christmas Game Jam, ‘The Game Before Christmas’ – and it’s as awesome as Christmas morning! In James’ game, things start off with a fantastic intro sequence, with some star-wars-like opening credits about a coder who’s having too much fun to stop, even though it’s christmas night! All the while, James has composed his own music on his computer and has it playing in the background, with clever sound balancing to allow us to concentrate on reading. After the intro, we’re greeted with an absolutely beautiful hand-designed intro page, with binary code falling from the sky like snow!! With a click on the play button, we can jump into the gameplay, with a neat loading screen for extra polish.

And then the fun really begins – playing as santa’s sleigh, we have to zoom across the landscape through the whirling binary snow, and avoid incoming traffic cones that will give us a game over if we’re not careful – apparently they’re explosive ones! And of course, we have a goal in mind – press the space bar to time dropping presents into the chimneys that are passing by below us! We have to mix dodging and present-chucking in a perfect combo that is so fun to pull off, and try and deliver as many as we can!

And of course, James’ game is also packed with details like little click sound effects for all of our on-screen interactions, stars that twinkle in the background, and even some super smooth, fluid movement controls for our sleigh. It’s a real Christmas miracle – well done, James!!

That’s unfortunately all we have space for in our Awesome Game Showcase today. However, hopefully we’ll see even more games from these members and all the others we have, who are always showing us that coding is truly awesome. There’s nothing us mentors love more than seeing your hard work and creative ideas. Keep it up, and we’ll see you in the next one!