The Floor Is Lava Mid Game Jam Showcase!

How’s it going, coders and parents?

I hope you’re all doing well, and of course remembering to wear your lava-proof boots – after all, we’re onto the second week of our latest GAME JAM, with the theme of ‘The Floor is Lava’, which has been full of sizzling, scorching and volcanically cool games so far!

As a reminder, our Game Jams are a chance for members of The Code Zone to let their creativity and coding abilities run wild – we choose a base theme and some starter code, but after that, what ends up in their games are entirely their own ideas! What’s more, they can then choose to share their games with the rest of The Code Zone, who can then play their games, admire their hard work and creativity, and of course award them some XP points too. It’s a great way of getting members to try out all the coding knowledge they’ve learnt, while having a ton of fun in the process!

Because our Game Jams are always packed with fantastic submissions, we always like to showcase a few that have really stood out to us within the first week. And so without further ado, let’s put on our protective gear and explore these lovely lava-themed games! In no particular order:

1)      Daniel – Lava at the Disco!

The first game we’ll be jumping into is from Daniel! Daniel starts off this list strongly by giving us a particularly groovy game to play – while others may have focused on the peril a lava floor can cause, Daniel wasn’t afraid and instead chose to make his game into one with a fantastic bunch of Disco-themed changes! Instead of the regular, default platforms, Daniel has filled his game with tons of colourful, flashy surfaces that we can leap and dance around on (as well as a Zonebot can dance, I suppose), with a brilliant Disco background to go with it. But rest assured, the floor is still lava – and the lovely dance floor will be engulfed by its fury the longer we wait, so you’d best dance on over to the exit! And in case you were wondering – yes, there is background music, and yes, it’s obviously Never Gunna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Doh, Rickrolled again… well played, Daniel!!

 2)      Layla – Lava, Faster and Faster!

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that our next game comes from someone whose name looks so similar to ‘lava’ – Layla has absolutely smashed it with her submission to the Game Jam! In Layla’s game, the exit door doesn’t just finish the game anymore – instead, the level switches to a new set of platforms, giving us practically endless replayability. But it wasn’t enough for Layla to just let us play new levels as we progressed – like all great game developers, she knew that the levels would need to get more challenging to keep players interested, so she’s made it so that over time, the lava begins to rise faster and faster, until it’s a serious challenge even for the most experienced of gamers. Playing as our awesome custom-designed character, we’ll have to be super speedy to avoid the very angry-looking lava below. Fantastic stuff, Layla!

 3)       Maya – Underwater Lava-flows

Next up is Maya’s game – she decided to switch up the theme a little by introducing lava to its opposite, water! With a super bubbly fun soundtrack playing in the background, Maya has set her game underwater with the player as a shark, and even adding details like a beautifully drawn coral reef we can jump on like a platform! But Maya has also added an extra challenge to her game – a sliding barrier, moving up and down, blocks our way for one of the most important jumps. We’ll have to time our jump carefully to make it past! It’s a fantastic bit of coding that gives her game some extra flair. And if you’re wondering whether lava can really be underwater – strangely enough, it can! So well done Maya, not only is your game mega-awesome, but it’s mega-educational too!

4)      James – Lava Riders

Now we’re going to have a look at a game from James, who has designed an awesome experience that very inventively fits the theme of the Game Jam. James’ game is a sidescroller-type adventure where we play as an intrepid little speedboat, surfing over an honest-to-goodness OCEAN of lava!! All around us, particles of lava spit up from the depths, and our speedboat leaves a jet of fire behind us as we whirr through the firey waves. We have to dodge heaps of floating, jagged rocks, that James cleverly programmed to realistically float up and down using trigonometry no less! Let me tell you – if the floor really WAS lava, I’d want to be the one on a lava-boat like this, that’s for sure! Fantastic job, James!

 5)        Thomas – Ice, Avalanches, and Multiple Players!

And next we’re going to have a look at a game from Thomas! Thomas has really thought outside the box for his game, which flips our theme on its head – instead of a rising tide of lava, a mountain of powder snow has begun to form at the floor, threatening to bury our player inside of it! Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say players, as Thomas has expertly designed his game to feature a whopping 10 clones of the player, all fully controllable!! And apparently, they’re all called Eugene. While it’s inevitable that a few of our Eugenes fall to their shivering doom, this approach allows us to spread out our characters on the platforms and grab as many of the icy gemstones he’s scattered around his game, that are our main source of points – and of course, if we’re lucky, we might get a few to the exit too! The custom visuals are so cool (no pun intended) – great job, Thomas!

And unfortunately, that’s all we have time for today! As always, it was super hard to pick which games to showcase (there’s always so many amazing games to pick from), and so don’t you worry if yours didn’t make it – we’ll keep making showcases, and yours could feature here in the future! Just keep up the hard work with your coding.

Remember that to play any of these games, you can click on the Game Jam tab and click on ‘past jams’ to view all the submissions for this Game Jam or any of the past ones, and even play the games that us mentors have made!

Be sure to give your fellow coders an XP point too by clicking on the XP star icon. We hope you enjoy the second week of the Game Jam, and we’ll see you again soon!