Projects »

Tear Shaped Door

Tear Shaped Door is an interactive game installation in which players can lick a boot clean. The fastest lick is recorded and displayed on the secondary screen.

As Above As Below

An interactive animation exploring the Western idea of the human body and its relation to cleanliness, holiness, and purity as well as filth, waste, and "impurities."

Grandpa

An interactive animation that dives into an imagination of the artist's Grandpa's life and their shared memories through security cameras.

Maybe Love!

"Maybe Love! is a narrative game featuring three mini arcade games. It follows a hopeless romantic's journey into a new relationship.

SUNKEN GARDEN 5 TO 9

Rack up points, or don't, they don't matter. Create meaning/make predictions/divine for the un-sunken-above. This is your garden, sink in as far as you want.

Cyberside Picnic

Cyberside Picnic is a eulogy for the cyberian commonplace that just eluded us.

We 3

A narrative game set in northeastern rural China. Delve into the lives of three characters and uncover interconnected stories.

All there is

ALL THERE IS inserts play into these professionalized environments and calls into question the alienated labor associated with computer graphics and computer simulation.

Utopia

A point-and-click interactive animation dealing with videogame addiction.

Famished

A journey of undergoing treatment for eating disorders, focusing on anorexia and orthorexia.

Flow

Bloom and Beware: Strategize to Safeguard Your Flowers in this Grid-Based Garden Game!

Aftermath

Aftermath is an polemical game that immerses players in a journey of coping with a spinal cord injury stemming from an incident of gun violence

Queer Leap

Queer Leap is a thematically and mechanically queer 3d platform game inspired by the quantum leap phenomenon.

Viewfinder

Viewfinder is a game about going for a walk in the woods and taking some photos

Mud Room

I’m slowly turning my family into a dungeon. Mud Room is a peek into a room in that dungeon.

Space Echo

Space Echo is a multiplayer VR installation about how humans and artificial intelligence perceive the world and how they interact with their own kind and with each other.

First Youth

First Youth is a conversational board game deeply influenced by life and relationships.

Hollow

A VR Project, explore a fallen civilization swept away when metal fuses with flesh.

Oil Refinery

A VR World combining a queered construction of a toxic space with voice overs from the artist's mother about her 30 years working in an oil refinery.

The Managed Heart

In the Managed Heart, you must navigate your emotional state, exercise restraint, and manage their exertion.

In The Doghouse

Shep, Po, Dobie, Collie, and the last-minute roommate Hedgar the hedgehog-human must live civilly until the lease is up!

US.

A game about a piece of decaying but fresh memory.

Long Way to Remember

A narrative game where players explore old recollections from the perspective of an Alzheimer patient to draw attention to this underrepresented group.

Fantastic STIs 2022 From 18 To 81

Fantastic STIs 2022 From 18 to 81 is a game about sex education, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and other STIs, which is a topic rarely discussed in games.

Faking Devil’s Advocate

Faking Devil's Advocate is a multiplayer game about the tension created when an individual opposes the community's opinion and the pressure on the minority.

Press W to Move Forward

Press W to Move Forward is a 5-minute experimental horror game exploring the rhetorics of progress, control, and societal pressure.

Grandma’s Ocean

3 women in 3 different time periods. Their generation connection cycles through different political influences, carrying love, trauma, and tattered ideas of home.

Obelisk

Obelisks are made from stacks of stones. Obelisks are markers of territories where tribute must be paid to enter.

A Modern Wargame

Should civilians be present in Donetsk Verdansk? Should players have access to killstreaks, like Predator UAVs or white phosphorus?

Night Running 夜奔

Night Running is a video game about softness, hardness, opaqueness, transparency, sex, violence, love, hate, confusion, and misinterpretation.

UserID

** Warning: Strobing images, mild body horror ** userID is a puzzle game and narrative exploration of identity.

A Mother’s Chinese New Year

A mother’s Chinese New Year is a visual novel game where you play as a woman that tries to satisfy her family during Chinese New Year.

A.R. Dream Carnival

A.R. Dream Carnival is about a small fantasy world for playing around to touch the 2d objects and add the color with your assigned color.

Terraforming

Role-play as a foreigner in the alien world, who reflects on our relationship with the outer world and other races.

Panopticon V1

You are a bot traveling through an alternate reality internet simulation. The world you defined as home, made up of 0’s and 1’s, has become physical reality.

Cut

Cut explores how automobiles have shaped American infrastructure and the culture, and how major corporations have changed the perception of cars in today's world.

Past Era

Past Era focuses on the visualization of outdated information in the virtual world by offering the “old version” of digital technologies.

Myth VR

Myth VR is a speculative mythological experience inspired by Chinese folklore and tradition, sacred architecture, and digital bodies.

Looking for Ace

Beni and Ace are two peas in a pod - wherever Beni goes, Ace follows. They are tragically separated after a terrible storm hits.

Velocity Holomatrix Warp 7

VHW7 is an hour-long interactive explorable digital environment that is reacting in real-time to an improvised score.

Six-Page Dungeons

A Compendium of Virtual Tabletop Roleplaying Games created for the DESMA 157 Game Design Workshop in Fall 2020 at UCLA.

Days Dark

Days Dark is set in rural China, the game is inspired by the Scar Literature rooted in contemporary Chinese history.

AIRWAVES

Airwaves is a text-based puzzle game about a family in China working as a telegraph & communications operator for over a century.

Pointless Mindscape

An experience for people who fall into the limbo of nostalgia and have trouble moving on.

Corona Time

"I miss my friends terribly during the quarantine and want to visit them. So I made this game to roam around in."

Fly

What better way to socially distance than becoming a fly and chatting on rotting food?

Hybrid Spaces and other objects

Hybrid Spaces and other objects explores video games as an art form, revealing potential interpretations and solutions by reinterpreting visual arts through play theories.

Intimacy

It is a two-player game that tries to simulate the intimate relationship between human interactions.

Pigxell

A pig trades furniture with the player in exchange for images of the player's body.

The Return

To preserve a world where nothing you’ve seen is worth preserving.

Groom

A game installation that centers on an insect with wings who cannot fly.

Wanna be my friend?

Wanna be my friend? is a 3-4 player tabletop game that explores the simultaneous joy and fear in making new friends.

Silicon Valley

In Silicon Valley, you play as a worker trying to climb up the positions to become a CEO at startup companies.

Cure

Players take on the role of different workers in a corrupted hospital that is heavily involved in black market organ trades.

Nightmare Temptation Academy

18+ NSFW: Contains disturbing violent & sexual content. Nightmare Temptation Academy is a dating-simulation/choose your own adventure/roleplaying game that is also a Rap Musical.

trace

trace is a board game about virtual identity theft.

Viral

Trigger Warning: graphic sexual violence, cultural appropriation, scat, bestiality, feminism, patriarchy, sexualization of school shooters, inconsistent use of fonts... 18+ NSFW

i

A social media network that consists of only the user.

Idyll

A farming and friendship game about 19th century American folklore and Romantic Individualism.

OK to Ship

Through the lens of airport security, this familiar yet bizarre art installation examines the prevalence of power, control, and authoritarianism.

Mleko a Miód

Mleko a Miód is an RPG based on Jewish and Central/Eastern European folklore and late 19th century Jewish life that uses magic as a key element.

Clay Box

Serve as a monitoring agent for the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency.

Clay Mate

Play as a clay blob that sticks to every clay object it touches.

The Void

You are one of the last survivors of humanity. The remaining country, AK Corp., has sent you and other citizens as adventurers on a mission to retrieve what is known as “technology.”

Lava

A volcano has erupted, sending lava across the path of four hikers racing to reach a single-occupant safe house at the end of the trail.

Chicken Coop

Battle with Jet Engine chicken, Hypnotist chicken, Magnet chicken, and more.

Loom

Loom is a game in which the act of weaving and buying are juxtaposed in order to explore the economic and social tensions found between consuming and producing clothing in a capitalist economy.

Mirror

Mirror is a game exploring personal issues with self-esteem and self-criticism.

Horse Game: A Friend You Can Ride On

Aided by a magic pocket mirror, players must guide their trusty and adorable pink steed, portrayed by game designer Nick Crockett, through both in-game city streets and the real-life Hammer Museum courtyard.

Game Prostheses

A collection of six game prostheses designed to be worn by an LG VS840 4G LTE phone.

Artifacts II

Artifacts II is a digital-fantasy based on a true story about adapting to and developing in an environment of emotional abuse and isolation.

Recorder Recital Ruckus

Recorder Recital Ruckus puts you in the role of making sure your students behave themselves during a recorder recital with one twist - all of your students are soon-to-be-famous sound artists.

Space Dander

Players inhabit the Herms, creatures of light that guide the evening star Hesper across the astral plane to the Perpetual.

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne [nee-mos-uh-nee] - the goddess of memory.

Ivan’s Parallel Reality

Ivan’s Parallel Reality is a demo of a narrative game exploring an art making factory in a hypothetical future.

Ex Nihilo

Using the HTC Vive players can freely run and climb to explore the peculiar chain of floating islands that fill this detailed, living and breathing world.

Vespers

Vespers as a game explores the Catholic view of Purgatory through the lense of an Elizabethan-era Everyman play.

Anima

Viewers can walk around at their own pace and listen to the environment. The overall mood is meditative, encouraging the participant to take their time and relax.

Empty Dreams

Empty Dreams is a a narrative experience about finding oneself in which the player explores a world of consciousness and memories.

Town 404

Just like the 404 web page, you can’t find town 404, whether on a map, a license plate, or a list of cities to which express can be delivered.

GateWay

Gateway is an exploration platformer game/walking simulator taking place across multiple worlds.

Laika

Laika is a game about the Soviet space dog Laika. It explores the ethics of sending animals into space without their consent.

Pixel | Antipixel

Source footage from the 2D arcade game Battle Garegga is rendered as a 3D volume by slicing up the original footage and then layering it on top of itself dozens of times.

Best Burger

Attempt to predict burger trends and barter with your fellow farmers to create the trendiest burger possible.

Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror is a study on the effect of a flow state on audiences as well as in artists.

Incognito Mode

Incognito Mode is an Alternate Reality Game parodying the battle between hackers, governments and corporations.

Regurgitating

Regurgitating tells the story of a flower's infinite reproductive cycle.

Moshambo

A new take on the classic game of roshambo, Moshambo is a fast-paced dueler that exchanges the original elements of chance for temporal tactics as players lunge, morph, and retreat until their hands inevitably clash.

南京!南京!

南京!is a game in which the players attempt to deduce one another’s identities against the backdrop of Nanking in 1937.

Plastic Vortex

Plastic Vortex is based on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of human-made debris caught in the swirling gyres of the North Pacific Ocean. The first animal to cross the vortex without choking on plastic wins.

Tubes

Tubes simulates the unbalanced nature of the Internet by modeling its physical infrastructure.

Gecko Ridemption

Gecko Ridemption is a browser-based, online-multiplayer area-control, rock-climbing, laser-blasting, stuff-barfing, sport-ish game.

Holla Pain Yo

Holla' Pain Yo is a competitive game in which two teams lighten a seesaw by drinking jalapeño water through a tube.

Letting them Sleep

Letting them Sleep is a game about unnoticed representation in which players use a character creation system to make an avatar that immediately goes to sleep. The most undisturbed sleeper wins.

Artifacts

Artifacts is an exploratory artgame about digital archeology, archives, and the language of the internet.

Phantasm Atlas

Phantasm Atlas is an interactive video installation re-imagining our bodily anatomy.

Mess.life

Messlife is a virtual DIY artspace in the tradition of warehouse art spaces and alternative venues.

UM TV PALS

Multiplayer garden rocketry action for 2-10 players.

Rotato Chipz

A little game inspired by Clu Clu Land and Power Stone Wars. The graphics are photographs of found objects and wadded up paper sculptures.

Junk

"Junk" is game based on William S. Burrough's essay "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness" that compares drug use to capitalism.

One Day, Independence Day

One Day, Independence Day! is a four-player game that chronicles events and figures from Korea, just after the country's division into North and South.

Real Shadows Shine

Real Shadows Shine is a minimum involvement experience about growing, slowing, shade, and blindly moving onward

Whisk’ry Business

Whiskr'y Business is a game in which you must change the sweater patterns of three hapless humans to match the cats which they occasionally pet.

Pug Fitness

Guide your poor obese pug to fitness by regulating his meals and maximizing his exercise time.

[Project Iron]

[Project Iron] combines gameplay-driven interactivity with a richly detailed and expressive hand-drawn illustrations.

Ddook Ddak Kimbap!

Two teams attempt to build a spring roll by stealing ingredients out from underneath the Dokkaebi's tentacles.

.45

45 is a 1 vs. 1 board game that uses lasers and mirrors.

Make America Great Again

Make America Great Again is an asymmetrical polemical board game based on Donald Trump’s views on immigration

Ring By Spring

It's senior year of college and graduation is quickly approaching, leaving young women with two options: get hired or get engaged.

Pursuit

Shit happens, so we might as well help each other. Meet you at the summit. This is the pursuit.

I’m So Glad You Came

Players use a lifecasted, penis-shaped, sperm-shooting joystick in order to move a matching penis on screen and fertilize objects.

Flow

Flow is a game about city management and water distribution.

Cupertino

As Cupertino rapidly becomes known as “the city where Apple is”, longtime residents must work together to stay in the city they call home.

Food Trucks

Put your culinary skills to the test and battle sandwiches in a tournament-style miniature monster truck rally

Sandswitch

Sandswitch is a game about food culture, sandwich building, and theft.

One cup of juice

One cup of juice is a game that converts a two person human relationship into an orange juicing machine.

Wizard Takes All

Wizard Takes All is a live computer game performance that pits a mob of farmers against a wizard in possession of boundless audiovisual powers.

Juggle

Juggle is a minimal arcade game inspired by early video games that maps digital space to physical space.

Pope Burn

Pope Burn is a game about the representation and interpretation of politics through print media in 17th Century England.

Alexander Doggus

Alexander Doggus is a wheelchair-using dog who used to be the world’s greatest show dog.

2222

The year is 2222. Earth has frozen over and there are no survivors.

Bananoculus

This work explores the relationship between acquired synesthesia, simulation sickness and life as a banana.

Pin Pon

Pin Pon is a game about online dating. Using a leap motion controller, players try to bounce stuff off their part of the table and into the opponents. Its always a match!

Arrangement

“Arrangement” simulates matchmaking by asking potential partners to draw identical drawings through verbal guidance alone.

Sumorals

“Sumorals” is a four-player board game about sumo wrestling and placing bets, where the rich get richer and the fat get fatter.

Locals Only!

Locals Only! is a game about surf localism and catching sweet waves.

Hex

A complex strategy game that tests your ability to build bridges (and tear them down).

Ship

A redesign of chess that takes place on a mutinous ship.

Guattari Hero

Guattari Hero is an experimental economic rhythm simulation of consumer experience through Amazon.com's related item feature.

Apoptosis

Apoptosis is a video game about a lot of things, but mostly about mental illness.

LDOE

Last Day on Earth is about the world ending.

Outcast

Outcast is a game that addresses the issue of dehumanization of homeless people.

THEM

A multi-media puzzle game to uncover the plot for a New World Order.

Primal nest

Primal Nest is an experimental 3D video game where the viewer can navigate the virtual landscape through an inter-vaginal perspective.

Orthogonal/Diagonal

Installation of regional redesigned chess variants, with new game pieces developed that sculpturally convey their rules of movement and relative power on the board.

Word Shift

Shift letters around the board to form words that cascade off and reveal new letters.

The Iron Range

A game of labor, globalization, and mining set in the Iron Range of northern Minnesota.

Space “Invader”

Space "Invader" is a polemical video that parodies the classical Space Invaders game but with a colonial narrative.

Mom Actually

Balance love and weight as you try to raise your children in the modern world.

Eco War

Play as nature or corporations - control or die!

Space

Control full or halftime operators for a directional and diplomatic twist on checkers.

Out

A game of self-discovery, courage, fear, faith, love, expression, and triumph.

Ephemeroptera

You are Cu, the captain of the newest model of mobile aerial combat weaponry EXO. With the help of Fin, you are to defeat the System.

Black Friday

Battle for gifts and yuletide glory in a gruesome Christmas-shopping spectacle.

Mind Asylum

Use a Wiimote to control one of three personalities of a schizophrenic man with multiple personality disorder.

Decibel

A trading card game about the inherent shallow nature of popular dance music.

FOB

Reconstruct your self identity as a non-native U.S. citizen.

Paper Sons

Attempt to immigrate to the United States through Angel Island.

Puff

Puff follows the journey of different kinds of smokers as they trade the items and tools necessary to feed their cigarette habits.

Masako

A virtual reality environment highlighting the atrocities of nuclear weaponry.

Food Insecurity

Play as a low-income individual balancing money, health, and dependence while trying to meet your daily caloric requirements.

(M)eat

This is a game about meat and the ever-conflicting information regarding whether or not humans should be eating animals.

UCLA Game Lab Cocktail Cabinets

FEATURING GLASS TOPS OVER SCREENS AND CUSTOM CONTROLLERS, THE ARCADE COCKTAIL CABINETS HAVE BECOME SOME OF THE MOST SHOWN OBJECTS CREATED BY THE GAME LAB.

Tedium

Navigate the American school system as an Asian-American student

Fromage à Trois

A magic cart opens a portal to an alien sky on your ceiling. Save the falling cheese beings!

The SLAB

A custom game controller for Mark Essen's NIDHOGG

PACWARS

Pacwars is a four player, team-based board game based on Chess and Pacman.

Leshy

A vertical platformer with trees.

Off Rail Rescue

An explosion in the neighboring boom-town has set their buildings ablaze! What's more, its destroyed the only railway out of ton and sent flaming tumbleweeds sky high!

Exit Palette

A puzzle-platform game based on RYB subtractive color theory.

Poliphony

After landing on a strange but peaceful planet you learn that your are equipped with the tools to talk to the creatures residing there...

THREE KINGDOMS

The oldest player takes the weapons bag and gently scatters the contents over the board.

DONKEY KONG TOWER BOMB

The tower was built in such a way that it is extremely dangerous for more than three intruders to ascend the tower.

Los Angeles Loves You

You are a sad, sad commuter in the city of LA, trying to get to work on a Monday (or Tuesday, or Wednesday...whatever.)

Tickleplane

Tickleplane is a game for 6 people that uses the keyboard as a gestural input.

Super Power Hour

Students create their own superhero characters with wildly different abilities

DS Bluetooth

Enable your Nintendo DS to communicate with countless other devices via Bluetooth.

Sparkfun Hangman

Two versions of hangman, one using a dial and one using colors and switches.

Kubisch

Kubisch is an innovative 3-dimensional twist on tic-tac-toe.

Burn and Turn

Capture the princesses and defend your tower - available on several mobile platforms!

Exodus

Piece by piece, change the huge gray city to a small, colorful town.

Subsidized

Stay healthy and wealthy in the subsidized agricultural market longer than your opponents.

CommComm

This 2-vs-1 game takes players through various storylines, culminating in a battle between two ghosts and their murderer.

Puppy

A two-player game of things getting awkward fast.

Escape from Spiderhead

Players must use various experimental drugs to build up the willpower necessary to sacrifice themselves and save their peers.

Escape from Sea Oak

Strategize your job, risks, and alliances in order to escape your humble surroundings and make it to the good life.

Darkgame

A sensory deprivation game in which players must manage their senses and abilities to destroy or evade their opponents.

En Gore

En Gore is a two player turn-based strategy game testing speed and dexterity using the concepts of foil fencing.

Jabberwocky

Play through five interconnected levels of Lewis Carroll's poem, getting new perspective on the world with each level.

Scatter

A three player cooperative game. Players must work together to escape an increasingly haunted house before it turns them against each other.

Rabbit Kingdom

A four player competitive game. Players controls both above-ground humans and below-ground rabbits to inflict insanity on the other players.

Trek to Tessalit

A 2 to 4 player competitive game. Players must beat their opponents to the center of the board by managing both their health and morality levels.

Monkey Soup

A monkey must navigate through a hostile environment with the help of a robot built from pieces of his spaceship.

Tube Monkey

Help the monkey avoid distractions and find his spaceship in the center of the planet.

roulette

Roulette

Play Russian Roulette against Brandon with a six-barreled revolver.

Material Girl

Flog and flirt with your crowds of suitors to make all the money you can.

Binary Glove

The binary glove teaches concepts of binary sequences and bits in a fun and engaging way.

Body Hack

An interactive game performance system where users match their bodies to iconic poses in pop culture.

Cave

The player controls a boy and a girl, one at a time, as they explore a cave.

Flatland ARG!!!

Flatland ARG!!! is a team based augmented reality game with costumes, props, Nokia tablets, spy balloons, physical stamina, and strategy.

DEITI II

Detonate all the angry deities by arranging chain reactions.

Blinky-Chanty Box

A multiplayer game for cooperative meditative chanting. It uses custom pitch detection software to compare the pitch-based distance between two microphones.

Corporate Ladder

Corporate Ladder is a strategic game of stacking blocks for 4 to 6 players. The object of the game is to take up the most space.

Battle

Two machines take turns trying to guess each other's next guess. Neither side ever knows if it won, only if they lost.

Rhythm Game

A sight-reading music game using overhead projection and the Arduino controller to create an immersive interface

Hull Loss

Participants make paper airplanes and launch them through a series of mechanically animated scissors.

Gemini Rue

Gemini Rue: a retro, neo-noir, full length, point ‘n click, dual-narrative adventure.