Gabby Rohrer –
Gamers and student designers alike will come together at the Stout Game Expo (SGX) on Dec. 12 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The semi-annual gaming event exhibits new games that were created throughout the semester by freshman, sophomore, junior and senior University of Wisconsin-Stout students on a variety of platforms.
One game that will be showcased at the Stout Game Expo is “Gem Buster,” which is made by Kendra Aumann-Weyenberg and Lucas Thomas. They are students in the class GDD-200, where each team has an artist and a programmer for their game. Thomas created all the art and Aumann-Weyenberg was responsible for the computer coding on “Gem Buster.” “It’s in the ’tile matching puzzle game’ genre. Gems can be matched into combos depending on their color and symbol. The theme is medieval fantasy,” said Aumann-Weyenberg, who is a sophomore at Stout.
Aumann-Weyenberg also was a part of SGX last December. She was part of a team of four that created a Chinese-themed board game that tied for second place among freshman board games. She believes the expo is a valuable experience. “You get to see what other people think of your game and also they can be strangers who have never seen it before. Sometimes relatives and family members come. So, you get kind of an insight to your game” said Aumann-Weyenberg.
Another game that will be shown at the game expo is “Poseidon’s Chase.” The game is a casual jump and duck game for Android that was made by a team of three students. “All the creatures in the game are based on real mythology, although the interpretations aren’t based on any physical descriptions,” said Katharine Grunwald, one of the students working on the game who is a junior transfer student.
“I have worked on the expo previously for GDD-100, where we presented board games. The experience was very enjoyable, and I learned a lot from some of the other students. There wasn’t a lot of time to play all of the games to completion, which is something that’s always been an issue with given time. But being able to pitch your game to reporters, professors and other students is a valuable experience in marketing and presentation, which I appreciate,” said Grunwald.
You can check out “Poseidon’s Chase” and “Gem Buster” as well as many other games worked on by other Stout students at the MSC Great Hall on Dec. 12.