Gloriously creative final projects have been finished and sad goodbyes have been passed around. Game Design Camp wrapped up on Friday with an amazing showing of creative problem solving, coding, and a good natured goofiness that summed up the entire week. During the week, participants bonded while engaging in outdoor game design, sensor maze building, artificial intelligence design, interactive, electronic board game design, and much more!

Some students really dug into the idea of level design, creating many-leveled games that tell a story while increasing in difficulty (above).

Some students used Scratch to design their final game projects. One participant coded herself into a story that involved a multi layered house and a mysterious disappearing sandwich (above and below).

During camp, we also focused on using simple tools to design outdoor games, focusing on the crux of what makes an outdoor game fun. Students got very creative with blob tag (Below)!

We also built outdoor games using a secret ingredient: paper plates. Students had to somehow design a game that fit these criteria: must be less than 5 minutes; must be contact lite; must involve at least 5 people; must somehow involve paper plates. Students came up with some whacky and inventive ideas (below)!

Designing a game usually involves a huge team of computer scientists, management teams, advertisers, testers, and artists. Several participants at camp got very into art design, creating partnerships where students took turns designing art for games and coding game elements (below).

An electric, interactive game board. Whenever a game piece hit a game board square, it would complete a circuit, triggering your avatar on the computer to move to a different part of the spaceship.

All in all, camp involved lots of fun and many giggles (above).

We hope to see you all at another WMSI program soon!