Ages 12–18 · Game Development
La3ib Course
Build games other people actually play.
Three terms in Scratch, going properly deep rather than hopping between tools. Students go from moving a sprite to writing their own game engine, and every term ends with other people sitting down to play what they made.
- Cadet
- Driver
- Engineer
- three terms, 10 sessions each
- Group size
- Six students per instructor, capped.
- Where to start
- Nobody is placed on paper. Tell us where your child is and we agree the level together before they start.
- What to bring
- Nothing to buy. Scratch runs in a browser and is free forever, so everything built here can carry on at home on any laptop.
The stations
Three levels, one course.
A student joins where they are and moves up a level each term. Nobody repeats a year, and nobody starts from scratch twice.
Cadet
First playable game · Usually 12–14
10 sessions
For students who have never made a game. No coding experience assumed.
One mechanic a week, and something playable at the end of every single session.
A finished game on their Scratch profile, playable in a browser from a link they can send to anyone.
- Scratch
Boarding
Week 1Sprites, costumes and the stage. A character that moves when they say so.
Events
Week 2Green flag, key presses, clicks. The moment the game starts answering back.
Loops
Week 3Forever and repeat. Movement that feels right rather than movement that merely works.
Collision
Week 4Touching a colour, touching a sprite. The first rules that actually matter.
Score & Lives
Week 5Variables. A game that can genuinely be won and lost.
Levels
Week 6Backdrops and scenes. A game with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Enemies
Week 7Chasing and patrolling, and why an enemy that only chases is boring within ten seconds.
Sound & Feel
Week 8Music, effects, screen shake. The difference between working and feeling good.
Art & Design
Week 9Costumes and sprites of their own, and their game planned on paper before a block is dragged.
Playtest & Publish
Week 10Somebody else plays while they watch and say nothing. Then it ships, on Scratch, with a page they wrote.
Driver
The shape of a real game · Usually 14–16
10 sessions
For students who have finished Cadet, or who have already made something playable on their own.
Bigger projects, real debugging, and the first term that starts on paper before it starts on screen.
A multi-level game with saved high scores, a title screen, and enemies that behave rather than twitch.
- Scratch
- Pixel art
Clones
Week 1One sprite, a hundred bullets. The single idea that makes real games possible.
Custom Blocks
Week 2Naming a job so the program is still readable a month later.
Lists
Week 3Inventories, high score tables, level data. Storing more than one thing.
AI & Logic
Week 4Both coursesBoth student courses stop here. State machines and decision trees: how a machine picks what to do next, whether it is an enemy or a robot.
Physics
Week 5Gravity, acceleration and jump arcs. A good jump is tuned by hand, not calculated.
Platformer Engine
Week 6Slopes, walls and ledges. The genuinely hard part, done properly rather than faked.
Cameras
Week 7Scrolling. Worlds that are bigger than the screen they are shown on.
Menus & Save
Week 8Title screen, options, and cloud variables holding a high score table that persists.
Design & Balance
Week 9Difficulty curve, a tutorial without a wall of text, and tuning from what playtests showed.
Release
Week 10Polished and published, with a trailer GIF and a page that makes somebody click play.
Engineer
Their own engine · Usually 16–18
10 sessions
For students who have finished Driver. They pitch the project, build it, and answer for it. Instructors advise rather than lead.
Independent and self-directed. The instructor is a reviewer for most of the term, not a teacher at the front.
An original game running on an engine they wrote themselves, packaged as a downloadable app and published.
- Scratch
- TurboWarp
- Pixel art
The Pitch
Week 1A design document, and a scope small enough that they can actually finish it.
Vectors
Week 2Direction and speed as real maths. Movement that is calculated rather than fudged.
Engine Building
Week 3Reusable systems instead of one-off scripts. Writing something they will use again.
AI & Logic
Week 4Both coursesBoth student courses stop here. Pathfinding and behaviour trees: enemies that plan a route, using the same ideas that steer a robot.
Raycasting
Week 5Line of sight, lighting and pseudo-3D. The trick that made Doom possible, in Scratch.
Procedural
Week 6Levels generated from rules and a seed, so no two playthroughs match.
Data Structures
Week 7Lists of lists. Tilemaps, save files, and data that outlives the session.
Optimisation
Week 8Why it stutters, and how to find out rather than guess. Working to a frame budget.
Packaging
Week 9TurboWarp turns the project into a real downloadable application, then outside testers break it.
Launch
Week 10Published and packaged, with a page and a trailer, to an audience that did not have to be asked.
The other lines
Or take the other course.
Plenty of students run both: one this term, the other next, or both at once. The AI & Logic session in the Driver and Engineer terms is the same lesson on either. And the third course is for you.
Try one session before you decide.
Sessions run 90 minutes on a Saturday morning. Message us and we’ll agree the right level together.