Tom's round up Jan 23rd
A big welcome to new teammates, a quick update of the hacks from last week, and the game coming up this week in the Game Dev Club!
If you don't know me, I'm Tom! One of the mentors and I make a lot of the projects both online and offline. A lot has happened the in past seven days but, I'll try to keep it brief!
This weeks game was "Turret Defender", a tower defence game. After many requests for this classic strategy game subgenre, we finally made one. Given how insanely good the hacks to the game were, we really should have done this sooner! There were plenty of upgradable turrets, new types of enemies and wiggly paths going all over the place.
Two new teammates also joined this week: Caitlin and Lee. They've part of the content team and will be making plenty of projects for you all to try. It's great to have them on board.
Coming up, next week's game is "Sky High Speedy", a lane-based infinite runner with plenty of potential hacks. Plus a look at playing sounds in projects, a targeting mechanic and a "Splat" project.
As always, just give us a shout if you need anything.
Tom
About The Code Zone Academy
Posts like this one are written by the mentors, about what members have been building. The Game Dev Academy has no fixed session time: a new build goes up every week and a child opens it whenever they are ready, with a STEM-certified mentor answering by text and video message when they get stuck.
Children build their own games rather than following a set course, starting in Scratch. Levels move down as readily as up, and staying where you are is a perfectly good outcome. Every mentor is background-checked and STEM-certified.
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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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