Student Projects

Babies & Basilisks is a virtual reality (VR) party game featuring asymmetric, local multi-user gameplay which allows two types of players to experience one game differently. One player, wearing a VR headset, builds a dungeon-like environment from hallway sections and rooms. Four additional players, in third-person perspective, use a standard gamepad to move their characters through the constructed environment.

Shotoku’s Defense is a virtual reality physics-based action game developed for the HTC Vive. The player must survive against enemies across five different locations in a stylized and abstract traditional Japanese temple.

In 2006, IMGD established a collection of video game consoles, design documents, and ephemera. Each year, IQP teams work with the archive, maintaining it as a living resource, gathering new materials, and prioritizing what’s already there, as well as what still needs to be acquired.

Our objective for this project was to plan, design, and execute an exhibitor’s booth representing the WPI IMGD program at the Penny Arcade Expo East 2017. We researched experiences of the past two PAX project groups, extensively collaborated with WPI’s Marketing department to design and create content for the booth, and selected student games to showcase. 

For their final project in IMGD1002, students create an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) by combining multiple media to tell a story across online spaces. Fictional people on the internet ask for help with everything from ghost kidnappings to evil corporations trying to capitalize on the fountain of youth. The students make short films, physical artifacts, websites, puzzles, games, and activities for their players, and over the course of six days, host an immersive experience at the intersection of both the real world and fictional elements.

In IMGD2500, students not only design the mechanics for an original tabletop strategy game, but they design the physical game itself! Through The Game Crafter, a print-on-demand tabletop game manufacturer, students create and potentially publish their board and card games for sale online—all while honing their design and art skills, which can then be transferred over to their digital game development projects.

Software engineering, asset production, testing and project management are the means of digital game development, but the end is an experience. Game design is the process of defining, implementing and iteratively refining that experience. IMGD 2900 and 3900 introduce the theory (lehr) and hands-on practice (kunst) of digital game design. Students work in small teams to design, build and test several toys and games using Perlenspiel, an abstract microgame engine developed especially for these courses.

Most IMGD students will take Technical Game Development II (IMGD4000) or Artistic Game Development II (IMGD4500), a milestone course that pairs technical students with artistic students to create a finished game in 7 weeks. All teams in the class are given the same basic game mechanics to work from and must create their own unique themes and backstories.