The Game Development minor held its first playtest session in the Game Basement at the Dutch Innovation Factory on Tuesday 22 April 2025. The students use the Godot game engine and had chosen a surprisingly diverse range of genres for their games.
This first playtest is an important opportunity for students to show their initial work and receive feedback from players.
Godot
The game development students' projects are made in the Godot game engine. This open-source engine is not yet as widely used as the two major engines, Unreal and Unity, but it is rapidly growing in popularity. That makes it particularly interesting to see what students can achieve with it.
The diversity of the games on show was striking. We saw a casino game, a futuristic racing game, a metroidvania 2D platformer, a roguelite/3D adventure game and a fighting game featuring a chicken. The racing game was particularly impressive. Playable on a Steam Deck, it looked very polished and offered gameplay that left us wanting more. The chicken game also kept players engaged, particularly because its theme is so bizarre.
GameLab Games
GameLab is also involved in the playtest, both to test games and to showcase them. Two students from the lab presented their projects: USB-BOT by Ajoeb Gaasim, a 2D platformer in which a USB cable searches for its other half, and PROJECT_PSL by Tim van Daalen, in which you run a small coffee shop as a barista. The GameLab games were well received and gathered valuable feedback.
What we saw promises great things for the exhibitionin June.