Family and friends gathered to celebrate 14-year-old Riley Jenkins on being the first to earn a Black Belt at Code Ninjas in Parker and is one of 57 kids around the world to achieve this accomplishment. 

“I’m just really excited for him to be able to continue in something that he’s interested in that I know is limitless for the possibilities that it has,” said Riley’s dad, Jeremy Jenkins. 

One day Riley and his family were driving along Parker Road when Code Ninjas caught his eye. Two years later, with the guidance of Code Ninja’s sensei’s, Riley has published his own video game, Solar Escape. 

With more than 450 centers across the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, Code Ninjas is a computer coding and STEM education center. 

Andy Lathrop, the owner of the Parker location, said they go beyond the traditional school curriculum. Code Ninjas helps teach technical skills, critical thinking, problem solving and resilience. 

“Kids learn to code by building video games,” said Lathrop. “We also have really cool STEM activities like robotics and 3D printers.” 

Never having coded before, Riley started out as a white belt and demonstrated all the technical skills to go through seven belts. He spent nearly 730 days at the center working on 120 projects to learn the skills to build his own video game. 

Riley started by building basic shapes, rearranging objects on the screen and changing the color of a circle, all the way up to creating an entire moving system, graphics, sound design and building high quality level effects with camera angles. 

Solar Escape took Riley nearly 10 months, 100 hours and over 1,000 lines of code to complete. 

“That is almost equivalent to what an average small start up would be doing with an entire team of people,” said team lead Cameron Atlas. 

According to Atlas, they move kids through the same process that one would have at a normal video game company. Projects go through beta testing, design review, prototype and get feedback in order to work out the bugs and ensure all aspects of the game are working in the interface.

Riley worked with the same software that was used to build popular games like Among Us and Pokémon GO. 

To celebrate his achievement, the sensei’s printed out 3D objects from Riley’s video game, gave him a certificate of congratulations and a special certificate for the Black Belt ceremony. 

Also there to celebrate was Parker Mayor Jeff Toborg. He awarded Riley with a certificate of recognition on behalf of the town council. 

Deputy District Director from Congressman Ken Buck’s office, D.J. Beckwith also provided Riley with a letter of congratulations from Congressman Buck. 

In addition, Bethesda - the developers of Fallout - will be sending Riley a care package based off their new game Star Field as Riley’s game is spaced themed as well. 

Looking forward, Riley said he wants to “keep coding and trying to make new games.”