Arch Enemy

By The Code Zone team 21 August 2023 2 min read

What a day we've had here at The Code Zone!

This week, our Hackers in Game Dev Club have been playing Arch Enemy and we've had some AMAZING hacks from our young coders! In this game, we play as Zonebot and are shooting the targets that float by onto our screen. However, we aren't alone; we are with Arch-Enemy-Zonebot, who is also trying to shoot the targets and take our precious points! We have 60 seconds to shoot as many targets as possible and to get more points that Arch-Enemy-Zonebot.

To make the game a bit easier for the player, this week's Guided Hack uses a multiplier mechanic. We create a new sprite which randomly appears across the screen every 5 to 15 seconds. If this is struck by Zonebot's arrow it activates our multiplier variable. At the beginning of the game the multiplier is set to 1, but once struck it changes to 5 (or more as some of hackers did!) - this means that for 10 seconds when we shoot the target we get five times the amount of points as usual. Perfect for beating our pesky Arch-Enemy-Zonebot!

We also saw some other cool hacks today - we created a win and a lose screen which would activate at the end of the 60 seconds and check the scores to determine which screen to show. We also made more power-ups which included faster arrows, fire arrows and even explosion arrows!

Also a big well done to everyone who participated in our Summer Game Jam - we had some amazing Elemental entries that our mentors are LOVING!

We can't wait to host the next Game Jam soon - do you have any ideas or themes you'd like to see?

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

Arch Enemy

What a week in the clubs looks like

More like this

Get it by email