Adam Zimmerman, a sixth-grader at R. Roger Law School, won the nationwide 2024 GameSalad Video Game Creation Challenge with his video game.
Adam's game, “Minecraft SaveYer,” was named best game in the nation in the middle school division and won a $400 prize.
“I was just doing it for fun and I never thought I'd win. How did I ever think I'd win a national championship?” said Adam, 12. He found out when his mother, Joanna Doubledom, came in during a math class and announced the win to the whole class. “I said, 'You actually won?' and she was blown away!”
Adam has a maker's heart and is always learning and tinkering. He loves building robots with his friends and has made a cleaning robot and a doodling art robot for his mom. After learning about circuits, he tried his hand at building a night light. He's also really into dinosaurs, so he made a dinosaur-themed board game called “Age of Bones.”
He first started designing video games with the online program Scratch, then learned Game Salad, a more advanced program.
GameSalad allows young creators to make their own mobile and web video games using a no-code visual programming system. R. Roger Rowe School teacher Jackie Mendez is using the program with her sixth-grade technology exploration class as they work on a yearlong project in game programming.
“Once we taught Adam our first two units on game coding, he was hooked. He brainstormed ideas, drew storyboards, and began designing and coding his game concept last October. He spent months creating his scenes, actors, and graphics from scratch to bring his game to life,” Mendes said. “His work ethic and desire to win this competition knew no bounds. He spent hours coding hundreds of lines of code establishing the rules, behaviors, and attributes to get the results he wanted. We FaceTimed him during class, lunch breaks, after school, and even during spring break to make sure his game was OK before he submitted it to the national GameSalad student competition.”
Adam's game was inspired by Minecraft. “I like Minecraft because you can do whatever you want and it's fun to beat the game and build a house.”
In one level of MineCraftSaveYer, players must get 30 kills while being chased by zombies and skeletons. In another, players must kill eight foxes and reach the boss level without losing a life. The characters look like tiny humans, and Adam, with the help of Mendez, created different skins to allow users to change the look of each player.
“Now we update every week and add new things, like skeletons that shoot arrows,” Adam says, “and we get ideas from people as they play, and when we add them, people love it.”
For example, we heard players wanted more speed, so we added a speed option.
As Adam says, throughout the game's development process, there were a lot of annoying glitches, but Mendes was always there to help troubleshoot and fix them, even taking the time out of her holidays to help out. “She's a great teacher.”
Adam loves watching other kids play his game, especially the praise he gets from eighth graders who tell him they love MinecraftSaveYer. His goal is to turn the game into an app and get it into the hands of even more players.
“His hard work and problem-solving to create an interactive game for kids has paid off,” Mendes said. “I'm very proud of Adam and this incredible accomplishment. This is a well-deserved accomplishment and I think Adam has a bright future in the field of computer science.”
