The Gotland Game Showcase 2020

The final 10 weeks of the academic year are our busiest. The campus is alive with students. In teams, they would be hard at work, creating magnificent games. Some of them would be building arcade boxes – the performative nature of the player being central to the game’s experience. Others would be building vertical slices of the games they’ve been burning to make – experiences that are greater than the sum of their parts. Even the third year students, sometimes find time to turn a game in – answering their research questions through game design. And then there are even more games – ones that were made during the year and updated and polished for our show floor.

As part of the Gotland Game Conference, students present these games to a jury of academics, alumni and industry luminaries. They also show it to their toughest audience: their peers and the public. For three days at the end of their spring semester, our students demonstrate, discuss, and present their games, taking feedback on their creations.

This takes them to the end of their academic year, and our conference: the award show where we recognize the hard work and talent that went into all the games.

This year, of course, was different. This year our show floor was at itch.io. This year the floor was open to everyone with an internet connection. 39 student teams choose to participate, and over the past 4 days they have received 524 comments with feedback and well over 1700 ratings of their games!

Big thanks to everyone who submitted games, and who took the time to play and provide feedback! Without further ado, we are proud to present the winners of the GGC 2020:

The Award Winners 2020

All 39 submissions are still available to play on the Itch.io Jam Page! You can also check out this live-stream of the games, hosted by the student union.

Finally: a big congrats to all the third year students who graduates today! We’ll see the rest of you again (on zoom) in September. Keep washing your hands, and have a great summer everybody!

Rate our student games on itch.io this week!

This year’s Gotland Game Conference was cancelled due to Covid-19. But our students have produced some amazing games for our, virtual, show floor.

The GGC Showcase opens today with more than 35 games available for everyone to play, rate and give feedback directly to the developers.

Perhaps check out these unrated gems first?

Thanks, and have fun!

Distance Education Decision for Autumn 2020

The Department of Game Design has formally decided to go online-only for the Autumn 2020 Semester.

This means that all of our students will be able to live anywhere in the world and fully participate throughout the rest of this year.

We would like to emphasize that this decision is only temporary and only in response to the current Covid-19 pandemic situation. We intend to provide our campus education on-campus as soon as the situation will allow. A decision for the Spring Semester 2021 will be taken no later than October.

Nordegravar, Visby.
Hopefully we’ll see you on Gotland by the spring semester 2021.

You probably have a lot of questions and so we have tried to collect some of them to provide some answers and resources for you: 

  • FAQ page about the Distance Education Decision for Autumn 2020
    • If you feel that your question is not answered there, please feel free to write to us and we will try to do our best to answer or add it to the list.
  • The department’s technician remains available on campus throughout the spring semester. Erik Wallin (@weakman54) is filling in for Finn Engström, and will be available in F11 between 13:00-15:00. Current students can contact Erik if you need any help with hardware.