The Game Design Initiative will sponsor a showcase for newly developed video games at Cornell on Friday, May 17th from 4-7 pm in the ACCEL Labs at Carpenter Hall on the Ithaca campus; please enter Carpenter Hall from the Campus Road entrance.
Students in the Game Design Initiative are eager to share the culmination of their hard work, including “Family Style,” a fun and food-focused, “family-style” cooperative game played on your mobile phone. The event is free and open to the public; media outlets are welcome to attend. All participants are encouraged to play the new games and vote for their favorite; winners will be announced at the end of the showcase, at 6:45 pm.
Some of this year’s new games include:
- Flourish: This strategy game for Mac and PC just won the Faculty Prize at BOOM 2019! In this game, players gather sunlight and nutrients to grow their plant, while denying those resources to their opponents.
- Cluck-Cluck-Moose: This strategy game for mobile requires players to strategically balance chickens atop a moose’s antlers. These chickens then battle for dominance. This game mixes interesting strategy with off-the-wall humor.
- Starstruck: In this cooperative game for Mac and PC, two players can control two astronauts attached by a tether. The players must coordinate their movements to steer the astronauts to safety.
- Family Style: In this cooperative game played on mobile phones, each player has a chef working at a table. The players must pass ingredients between phones to complete their recipes.
The GDIAC Games Showcase is held annually at the end of the school year, during finals week, and consists of student games made for CS/INFO 3152, CS/INFO 4152 and independent study projects. The showcase is not just an exhibit; it also serves as the final exams for the students involved and audience reaction is a factor in the student's final grades. The award ceremony at the end recognizes both the most popular, and the most innovative, games made each year.
The Game Design Initiative at Cornell University is part of the Department of Computer Science and is led by its director, Walker White, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and primary instructor of the game design courses.