Back To School With Game Dev Academy
Want to learn to code but can't commit to weekly clubs? You can learn at your own pace with Game Dev Academy! Keep reading to find out more...
Life gets busy around the new school year, and sometimes that means we don’t have time to take part in consistent weekly clubs. Luckily we have a solution for those of us that might find a weekly schedule a little tricky!
What is Game Dev Academy?
Alongside our weekly live clubs we run our Game Dev Academy! This membership allows you to have the benefits of our incredible weekly games and access to our STEM certified mentors to help you out along the way, without needing to join a video call!
What will I get with my membership?
These memberships come in two distinct flavours: Starter and Academy. Starter can be accessed for as little as £5 a month and provides you with our level 1 Hacker games, perfect for dipping your toes into the world of coding. Academy unlocks the higher levels so you can perfect your coding skills in your own time, without having to worry when next you can attend a live session!
Can I code in Minecraft too?
As an added bonus, all of our memberships come with access to Minecraft Mod Worlds, our seasonal minecraft content to help you learn all about the world of minecraft modding! These also come with a free companion account so another member of your family can play along too and have a great time learning together!
If you have any questions about Game Dev Academy, feel free to drop us a line, and we’ll happily go through the specifics with you!
What a week in the clubs looks like
Posts like this one are what actually happens in a session, written by the mentors who ran it. A Game Dev Club session is one hour a week, in a group of no more than six, with the same mentor every week, online or at one of our in-person clubs.
That cap is deliberate: it is what makes it possible for a mentor to notice when a child has gone quiet, or has rebuilt the same game four weeks running because they are avoiding something harder.
Children build their own games rather than working through a set course. Levels move down as readily as up, so the work always fits, and staying where you are is a perfectly good outcome. Every mentor is DBS-checked and STEM-certified.
Most children start in Scratch or MakeCode and move to Python and TypeScript when they are ready. Mentors write a note on every child after every session, which is how we know when somebody is ready to move up, and it is why a child who has gone quiet for three weeks does not simply go unnoticed.
More than a third of our members are autistic or have ADHD, based on what parents tell us when they join. Children can keep the camera off, type instead of speaking, take a break without it disrupting anyone, and step away and come back.
In 2025 we received the Autism Inclusion Award from the National Autistic Society, and in 2026 we were ranked second in the UK in Club Hub UK’s Top 100 Children’s Activity Providers.
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.
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.
