Becky - Game Dev Club Mentor

Becky is a Game Dev Club Mentor, shiny Pokémon hunter and mac 'n' cheese enjoyer!

 I got into gaming at a young age when my parents gave me a Game Boy Advanced and a copy of Pokémon Red. My journey into game development started at college and continued into university, and started working in the games industry as I was finishing up my degree.

My first attempt at learning code was in my Computing A-level classes, which involved jumping straight in at the deep end with writing Java! It was way too difficult for me and I had to drop out as I was failing - I didn't understand it at all! A-levels as a whole didn't end up working out for me, so I went to college instead to study game development. One of our first assignments there was to build a simple platformer game using a visual scripting engine called Construct, which was a lot more fun and easier to understand!

At university we learned how to use Blueprints in Unreal Engine, another visual scripting system, which is quite different from Construct but still less intimidating than diving straight in to written code.

In my final year of university, my confidence with the basic principles of coding got to a point where I started attending workshops run by an organisation named codebar, where I worked with some lovely mentors to learn some HTML and CSS (whilst eating some yummy pizza!)

Visual scripting was such an important tool for me when it came to learning the fundamentals of coding, so I really see the value in entry-level block-based engines like Scratch! Additionally, the coding workshops I attended showed me the value of friendly mentoring spaces with a learner-centred approach.

Outside of coding, I love hunting shiny Pokémon, going on nature walks, and making pixel art!