You can be an Award Winning Game Designer

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Game designers assemble! You could be an award winner game designer.

This is First Coding’s most exciting workshop yet! Join our 6 week game design workshop and build a game to enter into next year’s prestigious BAFTA Young Game Designer Awards. The sessions will help you refine your ideas, getting them ready for submission to the Design Awards.

To join in, you should be familiar with Scratch, between 11 & 15 years old and have bucket loads of enthusiasm.

Starting Saturday 23rd January 2pm – 3pm
£120 per pupil | Bookings: hello@firstcoding.co.uk

BAFTA’s full terms and conditions can be found here: http://ygd.bafta.org/sites/default/files/uploads/YGDTermsandConditions2020-2021.pdf

Play a Puzzle Game

Blog, Scratch, ,

Why not sit in the shade and play one of our Scratch games made last week. We were looking at designing puzzle games and came up with this idea. The game is called Tree House and you have to try and build on all the woodland but watch out, nature has other ideas! Click here to play: http://firstcoding.co.uk/treehouse.html

What’s really nice is that it’s optimised for mobile devices. A standalone, Scratch built game for mobile – don’t underestimate what Scratch can do.

 

A Week of Workshops

Blog, Scratch, ,

A huge thank you to everyone who attended the recent workshops. Due to the range of ages and abilities we actually split the intended workshop into smaller groups which made for a busy but very creative week.

All the Scratch games made in the sessions were absolutely brilliant and I hope everyone learnt something new, especially when we looked at all the different ways to circulate your projects.

Keep building everyone and don’t forget about the free Scratch competition we’re running this month. Please keep an eye out for future weekend and after school coding clubs run by First Coding. It would be great to see you all again.

It’s Competition Time!

1 CommentBlog, Events, Scratch, ,

It’s that time of the year again where we launch our summer competition. The previous years have seen some great ideas being submitted and so we’re really looking forward to see what gets made this year.

The competition is open to all ages and abilities, runs for the month of August and games must be made in Scratch. This year, entries need to be based on a theme set by First Coding. This year’s competition theme is…

Signals

The competition is free to enter and entries can be emailed to hello@firstcoding.co.uk anytime during August. Judging will take place during the first week of September and prizes will be awarded shortly after. We will be awarding a £10 gift voucher for the best game produced as well as an additional £10 gift voucher for best creative effort.

Good luck!

 

Using Scratch to Build Standalone Games, Build a Portfolio and Include Adverts in Your Projects

Blog, Scratch,

If you’re serious about designing games but not sure where to begin then take a look at what First Coding can teach you with Scratch. Learn how to build standalone games, get your ideas in front of a large audience and include ads in your games to boost your pocket money!

This is our example of how you can take your games built in Scratch and package them up into standalone games to create a great looking portfolio.

Check out our Scratch Game designer workshop this summer: http://www.firstcoding.co.uk/become-scratch-game-designer/

This is a great example of how you can take your games built in Scratch, and package them up into standalone games to create a great looking portfolio. My book, The Game Designer’s Notebook is packed full of advice on taking your first step into game development. Whether you’re young or old, experienced or not, this book will be helpful to you and it’s only £1.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B…

 I also have a Patreon page, where for $5 you not only get a copy of my book but you also unlock a wealth of game design resources too! https://www.patreon.com/FirstCoding

Toy Car App

App Design, Blog, Scratch, ,

This is such a great idea! A Year 5 pupil has built this little application in Scratch that has been packaged up to run on Android devices. When you place a car on the phone’s screen, you start the app and the animation runs. It’s designed to give the appearance the toy car is driving along the road at varying speeds.