Hacker Highlight: Sword Thrower

By The Code Zone team 24 September 2023 2 min read

Finishing off this week strong with our latest Game Dev Club Hacker Game: Sword Thrower!

Finishing off this week strong with our latest Game Dev Club Hacker Game: Sword Thrower!

This game takes good-timing and patience as the player has to throw their sword at a spinning log ten times in order to split it. Once split, the player moves onto the next level where a new log is set up ready for striking. For every sword the player gets in the log, they receive 100 points which accumulates with each level. But be careful... if you end up striking a sword already in the log with another one when throwing, it is game over!

For this week's Guided Hack, we looked into ways we could give the player even more points. We decided to add a bonus apple which would need to be struck in order to receive an extra 300 points - yes please! We first create a new sprite which had two costumes; one where the apple was in tact and one where it is split in half. We did this so we could add a fun animation and sound for when the apple was struck - super cool!

We then made the apple hide on the game start, and only randomly appear when a new level began. We then coded it so that the apple would wait until it was touched by a throwing sword, once this condition was met it would swap its costume to a cut-in-half apple, add 300 points to the player's score before waiting half a second and disappearing. One of the greatest things about this hack is that it can be adjusted so that the apple appears more or less frequently and the amount of points gained can be adjusted as well.

In addition to the Guided Hack, we also tackled a few of more of our favourites. From high-score mechanics, to splinter animation, background changes and faster throwing speeds. My hackers also came up with some fantastic themes for this game such as throwing axes in the forests to aliens landing on the moon.

Don't forget that our Game Jam is happening this week! The theme is Robot Rivals - you still have this weekend to get coding!

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: Sword Thrower

What a week in the clubs looks like

More like this

Get it by email