Column: My first week of California State Summer School for Mathematics & Science

Each day, our instructors, Profs. Mirek Stolee and Dani Wright, allow us to explore various types of games, ranging from role-playing games (RPGs) to cards. For instance, Honey Heist was an RPG where we became a team of bears at a summer camp, making up our own story and crafting plans to steal honey. 

Paper prototype created by a group of Cluster 5 students. Represents a modified version of the game “Subway Surfers.” (Photo by Soyeon Kim)

Paper prototype of a modified version of “Pac Man.” (Photo by Soyeon Kim)

After playing the games, we dove into specific game design topics. On the day we discussed the process of iterative design (ideate, prototype, playtest, evaluate), we made paper prototypes of our own modified games, visualizing their functionality and design. Through playtesting each others’ prototypes, we looked for areas of improvement and redesigned our model. On another day, we used a coding platform called Processing to attempt several coding challenges provided by our instructors, such as user input, object movement, and object-oriented programming. We always showcased our creations by the end of class. 

Our week flew by as we learned about the concepts of video (and non-video) games and made our own creations. All of us are looking forward to further developing our creativity in video game design by applying what we learned this week.