The Next Game Jam is Coming!
Are you ready to take part in a new coding challenge? We’ve finally left January behind which means half term is around the corner - that means it’s time for another Game Jam at The Code Zone!
For those that are new to The Code Zone, a Game Jam is a coding challenge that we run throughout the year during half terms and school holidays. We give you a theme, and it’s your job to make a game or animation based around that theme!
This is an opportunity to be creative and put your coding knowledge to the test - but if you need a helping hand our mentors are only a message away.
Previous themes have included; the cowboy themed Showdown, Olympics themed Mascot Mayhem, and the spooky Halloween themed Don’t Look Under The Bed. We’re not quite ready to announce the theme for the upcoming Game Jam just yet, so keep an eye on our social media where we’ll reveal the theme for the upcoming Game Jam very soon!
As always if you need a helping hand with your Game Jam project, our mentors are always happy to help. If you’re a member of our live online Game Dev Clubs you’ll have the opportunity to work on your Game Jam project during your weekly club, while members of Game Dev Academy can ask questions using the chat and receive helpful video messages from their mentor.
What if you don’t want to build a game from scratch? Then you can use one of our super helpful base games to get started! Our base games come in different types; from platformers to infinite runners to clicker style games.
The base games contain some pre-built code to give our coders a head start but it’s still up to our coders to add in extra features to make it fit the theme of the Game Jam!
At the end of the Game Jam, members can share their projects to the Game Jam tab on the dashboard. This is where other members can play your game and give you XP for all of your hard work!
We also always show off the cool projects our members have been working on through blog posts and videos on Facebook and Instagram, so make sure you check back to see what our coders have been up to!
The next Game Jam starts on February 10th and we can’t wait to see what our members come up with. The Game Jam is open to all members of The Code Zone, that means you can try for as little as £5 per month with Game Dev Academy Starter!
Not sure if our clubs are for you? Book a FREE taster session in one of our online clubs today!
We’ll see you at the Game Jam…
Happy coding!
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.
