A gardening bee runs a potion retailer, a sentient acorn fights evil mushrooms to guard their dying mom tree and an artist battles towards their very own rogue instruments to satisfy a deadline. These descriptions all come from the unique student-made video video games that represented Cornell on the Boston Festival of Indie Games on Oct. 3.
Three digital video games from CS 3152: “Introduction to Pc Recreation Structure” have been chosen as finalists for BostonFIG, a extremely selective annual competition the place impartial sport designers are given the highlight to premiere their initiatives to an viewers of trade professionals and native online game fanatics.
The coed video games — BeeWitched, Little Marvel and Monsterpiece! — made up three out of twenty-one of the digital video games chosen for the competition.
“There could have been one different 12 months that I had three groups, however now you’re speaking … most likely like eight, 9 years in the past,” stated Prof. Walker White, laptop science, who instructs the course. “It’s been an extended, very long time.”
Degree 1: Recreation Improvement
CS 3152 — crosslisted with INFO 3152: “Introduction to Pc Recreation Design” — offers college students first-hand expertise in online game growth. College students are cut up into teams consisting of each laptop scientists and designers, sure along with the only real goal of making a online game.
At the beginning of the Spring 2026 time period, college students have been solely given three weeks to be taught the fundamentals of online game design. By week 4, their venture proposals needed to be finalized.
When requested if there have been any limitations to what a gaggle might create, White stated that the scholars had the liberty to design no matter sport they wished, so long as the venture may very well be completed in a single semester and tried to push the boundaries of sport design. Personally, he prefers video games which are entertaining to people who are merely technical.
“I don’t care how cool your algorithm is or how fancy your tech is,” White stated. “If I can’t see it on the display, if I can’t expertise once I play it, it doesn’t exist.”
Teams spent the rest of the semester speeding to satisfy weekly deliverables, starting from non-digital prototypes to playable ranges that the professor and instructing assistants would attempt to break.
“Nobody took it as only a class project,” stated Christian Stefan Amadeo ’28, the venture lead for Little Marvel. “It was nice working with a bunch of people that actually took it critically and who additionally had enjoyable collectively.”
Groups that discovered essentially the most success have been those that would bridge the hole between laptop science and design the quickest. Most conflicts arose from programmers being unable to understand the work of the designers, or vice versa, White recalled.
Camille Beck-Belaman ’26, the venture lead for Monsterpiece!, facilitated brainstorming classes to attach the 2 contrasting sides of her staff.
“We’ve had so many hours of simply speaking by concepts, throwing concepts at partitions, and simply making an attempt to essentially ensure that everybody’s being heard,” Beck-Belaman stated.
Solely after a semester’s value of intensive team-bonding and grueling work have been the video games in ok form to be submitted to BostonFIG.
Degree 2: How-To-Play
The video games chosen for BostonFIG every needed to stability creativity with technical rigor.
BeeWitched is a potion-crafting and gardening simulation sport the place gamers assist a bee named Alchie develop elements for his potion store.
“It’s fairly just like other forms of restaurant administration video games, like Papa’s Pizzeria, that kind of factor, the place it’s useful resource administration heavy and there are prospects who request sure forms of potions, which you want a set quantity of elements for, which you develop within the backyard,” stated Sixinyang “Tom” Tian ’28, the programming lead for BeeWitched.
The sport is marketed as “enjoyable and charming” on the official BostonFIG web site, tapping right into a cozy, pastoral-themed digital style that has been growing in reputation since 2020.
Little Marvel, in the meantime, is a platformer shoot-em-up that follows a sentient acorn warrior on a quest to avoid wasting their dying mom tree from evil mushrooms beneath the forest flooring.
Platformer shoot-em-ups are {one of the} oldest online game sub-categories, arguably debuting in 1978 with the arcade hit Area Invaders. In a lot of these video games, gamers transfer freely by 2-D ranges, shoot at enemies, and dodge assaults.
Little Marvel goals to mix the traditional platformer shoot-em-up with a whimsical fantasy setting, partially impressed by David M. Bird’s “Becorns” pictures. Within the pictures, Chicken discovered pure acorns and twigs, glued them collectively and took aesthetic forest-themed pictures, positioning the acorns as sentient creatures.
“It’s his line of artwork,” Amadeo stated. “And once I introduced forth the concept of the acorn individuals, everybody was type of on board.”
The ultimate sport, Monsterpiece!, follows an artist who has to battle sentient, aggressive instruments in an effort to fill a clean canvas and meet a deadline. Gamers progress by the sport through the use of a coloring instrument to defend themselves from assaults. Because of this, the clean canvas is stuffed by splatters of not blood, however paint.
“Monsterpiece! is a color-splotching fighter sport with a slight puzzle facet to it. We have been impressed by MS Paint for a barely retro look on the artwork facet,” Beck-Belaman stated.
Moreover, the music design for the sport, developed by pupil Annabelle Ford ’28, took inspiration from Stardew Valley whereas additionally sustaining a extra action-focused beat to suit the sport’s battle element.
White believed that every sport was chosen for a special power.
“Monsterpiece! is essentially the most attention-grabbing when it comes to gameplay. Little Marvel is essentially the most conventional, however effectively executed in that. BeeWitched … is absolutely going after sort-of a comfy sport, non-traditional market, and doing that very effectively, and they also all bought accepted for very, very completely different causes,” White stated.
Degree 3: Attending BostonFIG
The online game trade is a aggressive subject that generated a complete revenue of $60.8 billion in simply 2025 alone. BostonFIG helps join passionate college students with real-world trade professionals and supplies a platform to showcase their video games to potential new prospects.
“There’s a whole lot of press there,” White stated. “And so what occurs is that typically individuals, they’ll go to those issues, and the press will choose up on them. And if the children have a Steam web page or an App Retailer web page, in the event that they’re cellular, able to go, they’ll get a whole lot of gamers after this.”
Tian thought that essentially the most beneficial a part of being chosen for BostonFIG was the skilled growth alternatives.
“I believe it was undoubtedly a studying expertise for us, as a result of there are different extra established studios on the market, making video games, showcasing them, so there’s undoubtedly loads to be taught,” Tian stated.
Beck-Belaman, in the meantime, praised the inclusivity of the competition.
“I believe it was additionally simply actually particular to see individuals actually love one thing that we spent so lengthy engaged on and actually is our brainchild, in a means,” Beck-Belaman stated. “And to see individuals who actually care concerning the trade, who actually do get pleasure from enjoying video games, really respect what we put on the market was very particular.”
BeeWitched is now accessible to the general public without cost on Steam. Little Marvel and Monsterpiece! are forthcoming, with estimated launch dates in early 2027.
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