Haunted Code Game Jam Showcase!

Happy Halloween, coders and parents! I hope you’re all feeling positively spookalicious this fine night… or day, or whenever you’re reading this. Last week was the final week of our Halloween Game Jam, which has been stuffed full of scary submissions that we’ve been loving playing through. A big well done to all our lovely members who have been taking part and working hard to make this year’s Halloween a coding adventure!

As a reminder, our Game Jams are a chance for members of The Code Zone to let their creativity and coding abilities run wild – we choose a base theme and some starter code, but after that, what ends up in their games are entirely their own ideas! What’s more, they can then choose to share their games with the rest of The Code Zone, who can then play their games, admire their hard work and creativity, and of course award them some XP points too. It’s a great way of getting members to try out all the coding knowledge they’ve learnt, while having a ton of fun in the process!

Now, while the Game Jam is obviously a Halloween one, we do have a specific theme this time too: Haunted Code!!  That’s right; in our members’ games, the very code holding them together has come alive, and it tends to be particularly nasty! But not to worry – our valiant coders have been working hard to squash those ghost-bugs like nobody’s business. If you’ve got haunted code - who ya gunna call? The Code Zone!

So without further ado, let’s jump into a showcase of some awesome games we’ve seen these last two weeks. In no particular order:

 Cole – Dodge the Bats!

Our first game comes from Cole! Cole did a fantastic job creating an infinite-runner style game this game jam, that is all about dodging incoming waves of jet-black bats, flapping wildly through the air and threatening to faceplant right into us! Yikes. Be careful though, these bats are full of tricks – a few of the pesky things will fly down low too, and try and sweep our feet out from under us!

Thankfully, Cole’s coded in the choice to either duck down below the high flying bats, or leap right over the low-fliers. And not only that, he’s also coded in a fast-moving scrolling background, which expertly makes us feel like we’re running at high speeds through this haunted forest, as stars whirl by in the night sky. This really is quite the atmospheric experience, and it’s super fun to play. Well done, Cole!!

 Joseph - Haunted By Spiritomb!

Our next game comes from Joseph! If you’re a fan of Pokémon – especially if you’re a fan of the Sinnoh region – then this game is perfect for you! Joseph has carefully drawn by hand a brilliant replica of the super-cool Pokémon SPIRITOMB into his game, a super powerful Pokémon that is as rare as it is ghostly! It’s such a cool Pokémon that the sinnoh champion Cynthia uses it too, in fact.

Joseph also added in some pokeballs into the game, that we can click on for extra time – maybe they’re timer balls, in fact! Overall, it’s a great mix of both Pokemon and Halloween, to make a truly brilliant game jam submission. Great job, Joseph!

 Giorgie - Ghost-busting!

Let me tell you guys – Giorgie really put the trick in trick-or-treat with this game! Cleverly, Giorgie has put a helpful guide into her game, that lets us know the true objective – we need to get 100 seconds on our timer, by clicking on things that give us more time. However, here’s the trick – in her game, all of the things that look like we’re supposed to click them, are actually all things that take away time instead!! It’s a truly cheeky mechanic, hahaha.

But thankfully, Giorgie has coded her game in a super cool way, where clicking on the haunted code will reveal the ghost that’s doing the haunting – and if we click on that ghost, then at last we’ll be able to get some of our time back, and win the game. It’s a super clever twist on the guided hack for that week, and rewards us for being ghost-busters! Fab stuff, Giorgie!

 Sarvun - Naruto's Fear of Dogs!

Next up, we’ve got a game from Sarvun – he’s made his game based around his favourite anime character, Naruto, putting the poor hero in a tricky spot this halloween. The entire game, Naruto (who is dressed up in a wizard’s costume, by the way) is surrounded by… adorable puppies! Wait, that can’t be right? What’s so spooky about those?? Ah, wait – I remember now. Poor Naruto is terrified of dogs!

And so in Sarvun’s game, it truly is a scary adventure for the main character. Sarvun has coded in no less than 19 puppies into his game, all with crazy variations, and all zooming around randomly. We’ll have to click on the tiny bowls of ramen without clicking any of the puppies, or we’ll get an instant game over. What a great game, Sarvun!

 Dray - Bob the Ghost Hunter!

And for our last game of the showcase, we’ve got Dray’s game! Dray has made a fantastic change of pace for the game jam, choosing to make his game all about a ghost-hunter called Bob, who certainly isn’t afraid of them. In fact, Bob loves ghouls and monsters so much, he’s gone to a super haunted theme park, and is taking pictures of them for fun!!

Dray’s made it so that stumbling zombies spawn in, one after another, slowly filling the screen as they amble about, and using our arrow keys we can move around and when we get close enough, Bob will take a photo with his camera. It’s fun to have a Halloween game where we’re not getting chased or in danger from the monsters, instead just getting to take some cool pics of them! Awesome job, Dray!

Well, those games were just brilliant! Unfortunately, that’s all we have time for today - as usual, it was so hard to pick which games to showcase (there’s just so many great choices), and don’t worry if yours didn’t make it – we’ll do more showcases again soon, and yours could be on that one, who knows! Just keep up the hard work with your coding.

Remember that to play game jam games, you can click on the Game Jam tab and click on ‘past jams’ to view the submissions for this Game Jam or any of the past ones, and even play the games that us mentors have made! Be sure to give your fellow coders an XP point too by clicking on the XP star icon.

We hope you enjoyed the Game Jam, and we’ll see you again soon!