Each June and July, the D|MA Summer Institute brings high school students to the UCLA campus to take classes in a variety of design-related fields. The Institute’s game design course is sponsored by the Game Lab and taught by Game Lab members.

In the span of one short week, students discuss good game design principles, begin learning the Unity environment, design their game, find or produce art assets, and finally create a finished, playable game, which other students play and offer feedback on. This is a valuable experience both for the students, who learning the process of game design and developing college-level skills, and the teachers, who are high level undergrads or graduate students getting the experience of teaching design, programming, and development skills.

Check out these videos of the student-created games:

Rob Manual has written a short article on Indiecade’s game jam that happened a few weeks back. Note the photos of game lab member Peter Lu (choking down on some Gamer Grub no less) as well as David Leonard in the included photographs. Several interesting projects including Miikl made by members of the game lab as well as some interesting guys from Stupid Fun Club (Will Wrights Berkeley based think tank). Finalists will be making their way to Indiecade in October for the FINAL JUDGEMENT. Click here to read the article.

Check out this video of the games made by the high school students in the second week of the DMA Summer Institute’s Game Design class, sponsored by the Game Lab. The same as last week, in only one week students both learned the Unity engine and created their games. Did you miss the games from Week A