Hacker Highlight: Deep Sea Diver

By The Code Zone team 15 October 2023 2 min read

We are starting this week strong with our latest game: Deep Sea Diver.

We are starting this week strong with our latest game: Deep Sea Diver. In this flappy bird style game, the player takes control of Zonebot as they travel under the sea. Using the space bar, players have to make sure Zonebot gets through the watery level without hitting any of the cave walls otherwise it is game over. Zonebot gets more points the further they travel, plus there are some special chests along the way to grab (carefully!) to award the player some bonus points.

For this week's Guided Hack, we worked on some animation code. We found the blue background a bit plain for an underwater level so we coded some bubble animation which follows Zonebot as he moves through the water, along with some extra fish which swam in the background. Both animations utilise scratch's cloning blocks - creating clones of each sprite and scattering them around the background and screen using randomisation code.

Definitely save the bubble code to your backpacks as these scripts are very useful for animations on main characters - whether its smoke coming from a flame sword or sparkles glittering on a wand!

It isn't Hackers club without a bit of high score code as well as some cool power-ups. Both these hacks use variables and the fact my members can make their own variables without any hint or help from me just shows how far they have all come in Game Dev Club! We've also had some amazing redesigns today from dogs running through parks to Minecraft creepers floating through the sea.

I also wanted to take a moment to say a heartfelt goodbye to two of my best hacker members: Casper and Atticus. These hacker-extraordinaire have come so far with their coding skills; their inventiveness and ideas never fail to impress me. From Casper's problem-solving skills to Atticus's ambitious coding concepts, these brothers will be very much missed by us at The Code Zone.

Best of luck with your new school and your new adventures - we can't wait to see you both again in the near future

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

Hacker Highlight: Deep Sea Diver

What a week in the clubs looks like

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