Secret Santa day for Uclan Games Design

Uclan Games Design students enjoyed an afternoon of Christmas games this week.
The consoles were out, Rhoda organised a quiz with prizes, the pressies were around the tree and the boxes of chocs were open!
See photos below for details :)

Games students visit Blackpool Zoo and Tower

Uclan Games design students recently visited Blackpool Zoo to observe and draw the animals there. We then went on to the magnificent Ballroom at Blackpool tower to watch a performance and rounded of the day with a bracing walk along the promenade and piers to experience the illuminations.

Special thanks must go to our driver of the double decker bus that we travelled in and also to Tutor, Rhoda Daly for organising the event.

It was a really memorable and inspiring day and we discovered a lot from observing the animals and noting their structure and the way their limbs move.

One of our Games Design graduates also joined us - Dave Towers. Dave completed work in mobile phone app development, and specialised in in pixel art and paper craft for his recent Masters in Games Design.  

As ever we had a brief to consider while we were at the Zoo, in summary

During the visit students  undertook a series of drawings of 2 selected

creatures in-situ. They used their drawing studies later to design a

unique creature which is a morph of their chosen creatures.

They could choose to emphasise or focus on aspects of one of the creatures but elements of both 

had to be visible in their final design. Rhoda led this brief and asked students to

consider the type of game world this creature will exist in? What is its role? 

Purpose? Friend or foe? What genre of game? Who is the audience?

More Top-down shooter games- designed and created by year 1 Uclan students.

All artwork and visual programming for these mini games was created by Year 1 students
BA(Hons) Games Design at Uclan.
We enjoy the versatility of this game engine and use it as part of our curriculum.

UCLan Year 1 games design student, Andrei Crisan created this
charmingly executed  Bug Blaster Game
as part of a current year 1 project with his own sprite designs
and visual coding using Construct 2 software.
Check it out...play now!

Jack Dowell's digital painting adds a hand drawn art style effectively in his game

 
Sian Knight's 'Attack of the Butterfly' Beautifully presented
fast paced game.

Top Down Shooter BUGS!

Year 1 have created a series of Topdown Shooter Bug games using Construct 2 software.
Check some of them out below. Click the image to play the game.

Jacob Da Silva's Bug shootout.




Yasmine Brough's Insect Game.

Rob Thorne's Insect Game.

Megan Thackaberry's Insect Game

 

Conn Hughes Baby Bug Game.

Laura Gorinaite's Bug Trails

Nontas Sfakianakis   Bee Bugs

Sophie Nieto Garden Bugs

Augsburg University of Applied Sciences visit to Uclan

This month we were very pleased to welcome lecturers and students from Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, 6th - 9th October. Thanks to Uclan Games Design Lecturer, Rhoda Daly for introducing this opportunity to us.
Senior Lecturers, Jens M�ller, Thomas Rist, and Mike Loos, brought a group of their design students to the UK to experience a few days together at UCLan, explore the campus and surrounding area, meet with students on our Games Design course and to share potentially collaborative ideas.

Jens and Thomas presented a fascinating showcase of student work and we were able to hear the details of development directly from our student visitors. It was very interesting to learn about the study that is done in Augsburg.
The Augsburg students are a homogeneous team. Slawa joined as a very respected and skilled student from the same study program and Corinna is from communication design with an interest in games. They worked together for two semesters on two different 'Unity' adventure games with different team roles. For all of our students it was be very interesting to see other working environments, other approaches and methods and to get in touch with each other.
Click HERE to see samples of work from Augsburg Game Development.
The students shared lessons and lectures during the visit but also there was a lively social schedule where the students made friends and had some fun together, out and about in Preston city centre.