Faculty, staff and students will have a chance to see the debut of four games from students at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, UCF’s graduate video game-development program.
The presentations will be at 2 p.m. Friday, at UCF’s Center for Emerging Media, 500 Bentley St., Orlando.
As a child growing up in war-torn Kosovo, Agnesa Belegu processed the painful episodes she witnessed by drawing the horrible scenes at her bedside table. Now she’s using her difficult childhood as inspiration for a game called Child No More where you play as a young child fleeing a war zone in a fictional European town.
Joining a trend of games that allows players to empathize with characters as they make difficult moral choices, Child No More walks players through grueling decisions as they attempt to save the child Arya from the atrocities of war. Are they able to protect Arya from the realities of war and save her innocence or let her see the horrors, changing her life forever?
Another game, The Channeler, uses the Tobii EyeX eye tracker, which allows the players to use their eyes as the game controller to solve crimes committed by spirits. The eye-tracking technology allows players to experience and control the game in a way they never have before, said project lead Summan Mirza.
The other games to be presented are Ley Lines and Sketch Artist. In Ley Lines players solve puzzles in a ruined temple using powers such as altering gravity, slowing time and shifting space. In Sketch Artist players are in the role of a police sketch artist trying to create accurate drawings of outlandish suspects who are accused of often humorous crimes.
This will be the first time the public will see this year’s games, which the students have been working on for seven months as their master’s thesis. FIEA offers a 16-month master’s degree in interactive entertainment and was recently named the No. 1 graduate game-development program in the world by the Princeton Review.
The event is free and will also be livestreamed at FIEA’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/ucffiea. The public will also be able to speak to the students and see a gallery of art from the games.