Hopping into week 2 of our Game Jam

By The Code Zone team 2 min read

With Easter behind us we are diving straight back into the nitty gritty of picking up coding skills and ideating our own games in the Game Dev clubs.

 
With Easter behind us we are diving straight back into the nitty gritty of picking up coding skills and ideating our own games in the Game Dev clubs.
 
This week in our Modder level Game Dev clubs we got cracking on with the latest in our MakeCode titles, 'Moon Lander', where players have to carefully navigate their landing craft down between hazardous rock formations to the safe landing platform below.
 
Many of our modders, young and older got straight to business with their guided hacks where a UI overlay pops onto the screen and guides our landing crafts with an arrow pointing towards the platform our players seek. Some of our newer coders over the holiday who attempted the guided hack demonstrated some stellar debugging skills by assessing and identifying any issues that arose and working with myself or their fellow coders to find the root cause in their code. Awesome stuff!
 
Of course our Easter Game Jam with a theme of 'Hopping Mad,' there's been some wonderful work produced on a range of project genres from 'visual novels' to platformers to adventure games! I took particular joy this afternoon in witnessing the creation of a globetrotting bunny adventure where we learn all about each country we visit. Another work in progress from the afternoon that we can't wait to see more of features a 'Getting Over It' style game where a bunny must hop to the top of a series of obbstacle ridden hills.
 
Be sure to check out the Game Jam section of your Code Zone dashboards once the event has wrapped up to have a crack at all the shared games.
 
Speaking of which, please remind your coders to go ahead and hit that big green 'Share' button in the code card of their Game Jam project if they wish to have their game displayed alongside all the other entries!
We hope you guys enjoy the rest of your holidays and be sure to keep messaging us in your chat bubbles if you have any code questions or issues whatsoever!
 
 

How a game jam works

  1. Six to eight weeks of club

    An hour a week, the same mentor, a group of no more than six. Over a term the pieces stack up: events, loops, variables, functions, and whatever else the thing they are building turns out to need.

  2. Then the holidays, and a theme

    We announce a theme and stop there. No brief, no worksheet, and no deadline you can fail. It is the one stretch of the year with an unbroken run at a single idea, which is why most of the building happens here rather than in the term.

  3. Then somebody else plays it

    Finished games go up on our own platform and on this page, where sharing between members is moderated by mentors. Other children play them and award XP. Having a stranger pick up the thing you made is the part that keeps children coming back.

The games our members made

22 games 22 makers 330 XP awarded by other members Built in MakeCode and Scratch

Every one of these is playable in the browser, no account needed. Have a go at a few.

Scratch 48 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping Mad!

by Isaiah1

i have much more progects fREND ME ISAIAH1 TO SEE ALL MY PROJECTS EXPESALY UNLUCK TOONS #COOL #FUNNY #UNLUCKY # PLASE…

Scratch 33 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping Mad!

by Tom M

My Hopping Mad game

MakeCode 28 XP (coding experience points)

JUMP IT!!

by Arnav

hold jump to jump higher, no checkpoints so you gotta keep playing get to the top!! flag at the end!! pls like!!, there…

Scratch 26 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping Mad!

by Lauren

Use the mouse to move the hammer and click on Cybunny to get the eggs back. Collect 65 eggs within 60 seconds and you…

MakeCode 24 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping Mad!

by Le real real Lewis

MakeCode 16 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping around the world

by MiraGlew

Press 'A' when there is text to go to the next one. when the bunny hopping goes on the screen, that when the next…

Scratch 13 XP (coding experience points)

jump

by GRISHAAN

tis is my game

MakeCode 8 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping Mad!

by Memo

its just a funny animation

Scratch 4 XP (coding experience points)

Hopping Mad!

by Alexandra2

sit back, relax and enjoy!!

MakeCode 4 XP (coding experience points)

Hop Mad v3

by OliG3412

HOP MAD V2 BY OLIVER ========================================================================================== Press…

Scratch

Hopping Mad!

by ZolaGHendrix

Do not fall off the platforms because if you do that you will lose the game there is a more easier way is if you see a…

About our game jams

A game jam is a themed build: we announce a theme, and children across the clubs spend a few weeks making something from it. There is no brief beyond the theme and nothing to finish by a deadline you can fail. Children share what they made on our own platform, where chat and sharing between members is moderated by mentors.

Jams run alongside the ordinary weekly clubs rather than instead of them. A Game Dev Club session is one hour a week, in a group of no more than six, with the same DBS-checked, STEM-certified mentor each week.

Children build their own games rather than working through a set course, starting in Scratch or MakeCode and moving to Python and TypeScript when they are ready.

Past themes have included Evolution, Elemental Powers, The Wall of Doom and Strange Sports, and the results range from a two-screen platformer to something genuinely strange that only makes sense to its author. Both count. A jam is the one point in the year where the brief is deliberately loose, which is when children who normally follow instructions carefully surprise everybody.

Mentors write a note on every child after every session, which is how we know when somebody is ready to move up a level, or would rather stay where they are. Levels move down as readily as up, so the work always fits.

More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join, and in 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society.

Children can keep the camera off, type instead of speaking rather than being put on the spot, take a break without it disrupting anyone, and step away and come back.

Jams tend to be where that matters most: a deadline nobody set and a theme nobody has to interpret the same way is a much easier place to take a risk than a classroom is.

Live clubs run online across the UK and in person across Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Over 1,000 children are enrolled. In 2026 we were ranked second in the UK in Club Hub UK’s Top 100 Children’s Activity Providers, scored by five independent judges on safeguarding, inclusivity and community impact.

More like this

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 game jam

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