We've been having fun with Flyie Drone this week!

By The Code Zone team 16 March 2023 2 min read

Read all about what our children have been creating in our Game Dev Club!

Kicking off this week, our coding whizzes blasted through Flyie Drone's guided hack this evening and even completed some fun hacks of their own.

'Flyie Drone' is the Code Zone's answer to the well-beloved mobile game flappy bird. In this game, you must navigate your drone through the obstacles without touching them and without letting your drone drift to close to the edges - otherwise its game over! The Guided Hack is a fun bit of code that allows your background to scroll as you play, giving you a sense of movement as you fly your drone. By creating a clone of the background, utilising different layers and executing the movement with a broadcast block, we can make a still image appear as if it is continuously scrolling - neat!

Our club members also came up with some fantastic hack ideas of their own. One of our regulars added a score multiplier using the pre-coded coins and took it even further and created a magnet effect on their drone so the coins would automatically glide to the player effortlessly.

Another member replaced their coins with enemies and equipped their drone with a laser, meaning the player had to blast away the enemies whilst also trying to navigate the obstacles in order to move forward.

One ambitious idea was to have the ability to change your drone for another. By utilising some clever broadcasting code, we were able to create a menu at the beginning of the game where the player could select which drone they would like to fly. Another code zone member implemented a lives system; starting with only 1 life, your drone could collect more lives along the way but at the risk of hitting an obstacle whilst trying to obtain it. Risky business!

Find out more about our Game Dev Club

What a week in the clubs looks like

Posts like this one are what actually happens in a session, written by the mentors who ran it. A Game Dev Club session is one hour a week, in a group of no more than six, with the same mentor every week, online or at one of our in-person clubs.

That cap is deliberate: it is what makes it possible for a mentor to notice when a child has gone quiet, or has rebuilt the same game four weeks running because they are avoiding something harder.

Children build their own games rather than working through a set course. Levels move down as readily as up, so the work always fits, and staying where you are is a perfectly good outcome. Every mentor is DBS-checked and STEM-certified.

Most children start in Scratch or MakeCode and move to Python and TypeScript when they are ready. Mentors write a note on every child after every session, which is how we know when somebody is ready to move up, and it is why a child who has gone quiet for three weeks does not simply go unnoticed.

More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join. Children can keep the camera off, type instead of speaking, take a break without it disrupting anyone, and step away and come back.

In 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society, and in 2026 we were ranked second in the UK in Club Hub UK’s Top 100 Children’s Activity Providers.

The blog is in two halves. Guides are the evergreen explainers written by the mentors who teach the clubs, covering the questions parents actually ask: what comes after Scratch, how to support a coding-mad child when you cannot code yourself, and what works for autistic and ADHD children.

Club news is the other half, and it is where posts like this one live: game jams, Minecraft builds and weekly roundups, written up by whoever ran the session. Neither is marketing. If you want to know what an hour actually looks like before you book anything, club news is the more honest read of the two.

The first session is a free taster and we do not ask for card details. Book a free taster session, see what it costs, or read about support for neurodivergent children.

Filed under club updates

We've been having fun with Flyie Drone this week!

What a week in the clubs looks like

More like this

Get it by email