By Justin Lever
CCC Journalism Program
BLACKWOOD – Members of the Camden County College Video Game Club showcased games they designed and produced at their Video Game Night from 6 to 8 p.m. Nov. 27 in the Wolverton Library on the Blackwood campus. The event also allowed visitors who may be interested in the college’s video game program to check out the creations.
“Cleanup On The Icarus” is one of the games that was showcased. By Justin Lever, CCC Journalism Program
“Tonight is going to be exciting,” said Ryan Morrison, who is in charge of the club and has been teaching game design at Camden County College for the last 15 years. “We are going to be opening up our doors to people who are interested in our program and they are going to get to come see some works in progress.”
Sixteen students make up the club and had made five games to showcase at the event.
Club member Aaron Crespo, 20, a design major, said he loves playing and designing video games. “I love playing them, as they’ve always been an emotional escape for me,” Crespo said. “I like telling stories, making these creative worlds and being able to make a game where you can sit down and look at the world you built is pretty cool.”
He and his group made a computer game called “Hillbilly Highway,” a top-down shooter in which players have to destroy the obstacles in their way to get from one point to the next.
Two of the other games were of the card-playing type. The objective of one of them is to defeat the other players by collecting a relic. In the other card game, players had to eliminate their opponents and become the last person standing to win.
The other two games were part of something that had never been done before in the club. “We are making a trilogy,” said Jeff Pelley, 27, a business major, who was part of the team that designed the trilogy. “This trilogy is all about Thomas, who is a janitor on a space station called the Icarus, who gets knocked out and wakes up to his ship being taken over by aliens and you have to help him escape the ship.”
Morrison said Video Game Night will return in the spring.
“I think this was a huge success, although it was poorly attended. We have already confirmed with the library to do this again in the spring semester right before finals and the overall support for this event was overwhelming,” Morrison said.
For more information on the games, visit http://scrapyard.gamedesignguild.com/.