Adam Procter, Programme Leader for BA Games Design & Art at Winchester School of Art, gives us a quick rundown of the school’s first prototype arcade of 2018.
On Friday 12 January, 1st Year Game Design & Art students presented their work to the public for the first time at a ‘Pop-up Arcade’ at Winchester School of Art.
We had around 60 people circulating during the whole event in Studio 32, playing and testing our student’s prototypes. Seven prototypes were presented during the Arcade. The prototypes included a Japanese-inspired relaxing obstacle game to colour puzzles, bees, moving platforms, gravity, switching spaces and an atmospheric dungeon!
The theme of the event was ‘HitchBrick’, a combination of movies from Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. Students where asked over a 4-week period in teams to translate ideas, movements and interactions from the films into game mechanics. For example the sweeping attack of the birds from Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller could become the movement of a player, or even abstract the slow-paced voice of HAL in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey into a game movement; these translations informed and drove their prototype designs. Overall, it was a fun time and students got a lot of feedback from players!
The next event for Year 1 will be hosted in Winchester City Centre, at Comics, Games and Coffee! Follow the Games Design & Art blog for more details: medium.com/@gamesdesignart
This was a great event and even a non-gamer like myself was made to feel very welcome!