Students from AP Computer Science are working together to create a video game that is developed entirely by students, utilizing their coding, artistic and musical skills. Two game-loving AP Computer Science students took initiative on this project: Tiger Li ‘18 and Michael Zhang ‘18. The duo managed to recruit a team of ten people that came from different backgrounds with unique skillsets to create distinct parts of the game.

As the class’s teacher Mr. Saxton said, “The collaboration between students is a great thing.” As a student-run and -organized project, the experience of taking initiative to create the game simulates a project conducted by a company, including bi-weekly meetings to discuss the direction of the project.

Many people in the group are dedicated gamers, and their passion is what inspired many of them to create a game of their own. Co-project leader and head music and art director Li said, “I was inspired by late 1990, early 2000 JRPGs like Pokemon.” Even many of the game’s features and art style draw upon this type of game that we all grew up with, a 2D role-playing game.

While the game is currently in the early stages of development, as the project began in early March, the team hopes to finish a playable demo of the game before the end of summer. The demo would be fully functional and provide up to an hour of playtime.

At this point, the game will be posted online as an alpha version. A completed version will hopefully be finished by the time project leaders Li and Zhang graduate from Kent.