Summer Splash Game Jam Roundup!

Our second, and final, Summer Game Jam is over, and we had so much fun! We've collected some of our favorite games that our members have worked on, keep reading to take a look!

Once again another excellent game jam has come and gone, and once again we’ve had so many wonderful submissions that we’d LOVE to share with you! Sadly we only have time for a few of these today but we’ve been absolutely stunned by everyone’s games this time round!

Summer Octo-Splash by Fraser

a title screen for a child's game, it has a dark green background and says "the code zone summer octo splash"

This game sees a retro styled octopus trying to collect loads of shells while avoiding sharks, starfish, and birds! When we lose we even get a really cool interactive title screen, big fan of the vibes on display here!

Summer Splash by Dylan

a top down view of a little orange robot on one of four water slide lanes

Dylan sets this game atop a grand water slide with multiple lanes, it’s our job to dodge all of the obstacles that appear as we slide down! How long can you survive without running into a dropped hat or a misplaced rubber ring?

Twisty Summer Splash by Nial

a pixel art platformer game with grass and water tiles and a pixel art dinosaur

This fun and interesting twist on our base game gives us a new twist to the level every time we play! Maybe your dinosaur has gills and needs to enter the water to survive? Maybe there’s been a drought? Maybe the entire level is flipped on its head!

Summer Splash by Oliver

a hand drawn water background and hand drawn rock, with a diver character swimming around it

Oliver’s game starts with a fun little skit before taking us underwater with a diver trying to avoid rocks that float towards us! Rumor has it that there’s a special voice line that plays if you manage to stay alive for ten whole minutes!!

 

And that’s just a few of our favourite games from our most recent game jam! Hungry for more? Just head on over to the game jam tab and play these and more! 

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.

About our game jams

A game jam is a themed build: we announce a theme, and children across the Academy 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 are included in Academy membership. They are the part of the Academy where everybody is working on the same thing at once, which for a self-paced course is worth having.

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 the work actually looks like before you sign up to anything, club news is the more honest read of the two.

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