Showdown Game Jam Round Up!

Our May Half Term Game Jam has come to an end! Find out what's been happening in our clubs and from our coders!

With a tip of our hats, and the orange glow of the setting sun – Our May 2024 Game Jam comes to a close. But what a rootin’, tootin’ performance it’s been, from all of you!

In case you missed it (and the twirling tumbleweeds and spur-heeled boots didn’t give it away), our theme for this one was ‘SHOWDOWN’, so we were hoping for lots of cowboy and old-western games – and we saw a veritable horde of them that blew us away with their creativity! I hope you’re holding onto your saddles, pardners – we’re about to gallop in and have a closer look!

Just as you might expect in the wild west, our journey into this Game Jam starts with some epic action! We had a bunch of adventurous games in our roster this time round, with plenty of old-timey duels out in the desert, firing lasers at pesky outlaws who threatened the peace of our lovely code clubs!

In ‘Wild West Trouble’ we had to leap over enemy projectiles, and in another game we had to sidestep around pillars to flee from our approaching opponent. And of course, who can forget the game where we not only got to fight a cheeky outlaw, but also a sentient tumbleweed?! I’m not sure what evil scientist was involved there, but it was certainly a tricky battle!

But of course, the old west wasn’t all just showdowns at high noon. One game – aptly named ‘Dodge the EVIL’ had us fleeing through the dunes, leaping high over cacti, in an infinite-runner fashion! And in another, we got to play a high-stakes game of hide and seek with a rather skeletal-looking sheriff… let me tell you from experience, you don’t want to get caught by him!

So you’d best keep ducking and weaving through the busy streets and houses, gaining points as you go. Even the beautiful shine of gold itself wasn’t safe in our Game Jam – one of our games featured fake coins that exploded if you grabbed them! Yikes…

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Now, after all that excitement, you’d probably want to do something lighthearted to relax with… well, our coders have got you covered for that too! We had a couple of dance-off games that let us boogie our way to victory, with one particularly amazing one that got faster and faster as time went on – you’d best press those arrow keys fast and not stop till the cows come home!

And if dancing isn’t really your style, you can relax and watch some cool animations of cowboy shenanigans, or admire some lovely wild western artwork, or even re-enact a showdown as a couple of ants! All of these and more awaited us in the Game Jam – I’m sure you can you see why we’re so impressed with our members!

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And of course, us mentors had a crack at it too – Rodeos, Gold Rushes, Rootin-Tootin Shooters and Captured Cat Deputies all appeared in their games, just adding to the cowboy frenzy!

Overall, everyone did a fantastically creative job, with powerful coding knowledge and fantastic visual designs – we’re all super proud of you!
That’s all from us for now – but we’ll see you next time for another epic Game Jam! Yeehaw, and farewell!

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

28 games 25 makers 466 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.

MakeCode 60 XP (coding experience points)

Tower Roulette

by DanielBarnard

Take turns firing the shotgun Red shells are lives, Black ones are blanks Fire a blank at your own tower for an extra…

MakeCode 37 XP (coding experience points)

Hide 'n' seek with the sheriff!

by TaishaKARANTH

The sheriff is after you and it's your job to escape him for as long as you can! Please note that this game will have…

MakeCode 36 XP (coding experience points)

Dodge the EVIL

by Ella1

In this game, you have to jump over the cactuses with the A or space key and shoot arrows at camels at the same time…

Scratch 30 XP (coding experience points)

show down flim

by the random guy who made the object show tacos

click the green flag and it will play it self

Scratch 26 XP (coding experience points)

Spring 2024 Half Term Game Jam

by Tyrone

to move right you prees the right arow key or d to move left prees the left arow or ato jump it is space if the ball…

Scratch 15 XP (coding experience points)

Gold Rush

by Lauren

Use the left and right arrows to help your cowboy collect the gold and avoid the obstacles. Watch out for bandits who…

Scratch 14 XP (coding experience points)

Clicker

by Sam13

Click to shoot and hitting the enamy you will get 10 points and 1 cliker point

MakeCode 13 XP (coding experience points)

show down

by Harry14

a (spacebar) is the fire ball and b (enter) is the one time use move. have fun :)

Scratch 12 XP (coding experience points)

Rodeo Rockin'

by MollyMentor

Press the arrows on your keyboard as the icons on screen touch the wooden planks at the bottom :)

MakeCode 12 XP (coding experience points)

Saloon Shootout

by SamMentor

Click the letters to type the word before your opponent! First to three wins!

Scratch 8 XP (coding experience points)

Draw! - A Western Shoot-Em-Up Game

by SonnyCS2013

Use A and D to move left and right. Press space to jump. Click to where you want to shoot, and beat your opponent! Music…

Scratch 6 XP (coding experience points)

The town is overrun

by Paul

Not quite complete - I ran out of time to make the graphics But...arrow keys to move, space to shoot. Have fun :)

Scratch 3 XP (coding experience points)

shooting crazy

by ArthurFarley

shoot the targets .note still working on it

MakeCode 3 XP (coding experience points)

wild west trouble

by Brooklyn1

press space to jump and left arrow key to shoot

Scratch 2 XP (coding experience points)

The explosion coin!

by Jarvis

Press left arrow to go left, press right arrow to go right. Get the coins but never get explosive versions.

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.

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