Mankato East students' video game make Top 10 in national competition

Holly Marie Moore, The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.
·3 min read

Feb. 21—The concept of Mankato East senior Zac Possin and junior Bret Robb's original video game, Tomb of Nightmares, might sound simple.

It's a dungeon exploration game where the player is trapped in a tower and needs to collect items to defeat the final boss, Wyvern.

But the students, who created the game as part of a project for the school's Game It class, said their goal was to give players a challenge.

"You're not supposed to beat it your first time around," Robb said. "It was supposed to be something that you have to keep replaying in order to learn all about it that you possibly could before you take on the task of fighting the final boss and finally getting that win."

The school's Game It class teaches computer programming through building video games.

As part of their project, students were required to create an original video game that included game characters, sound, backgrounds and other elements.

Now, without any previous game design experience, Possin and Robb's hard work is paying off.

Tomb of Nightmares has made it into the Top 10 of STEM Fuse's national GOT GAME competition, after their teacher, David Stahl, encouraged them to enter.

Both students, who are gamers themselves, said they're thrilled their submission has made it this far.

"I couldn't believe it. I had faith in the game being really good, because I felt it was one of the better games, but Top 10 is not what I expected at all," Robb said.

"I was pretty proud of the game we created, but I didn't think it would do as well as it did, so I was very happy," Possin added.

Stahl, who said he encourages his students to enter into the competition every year, said Tomb of Nightmares has several elements that make it a stand-out game.

"It's originality, attention to detail, and it's just the complexity of the game, too. It's not a basic game by any means. It has a lot of different levels. It took an incredible amount of coding to make this game work, but just the overall complexity of the game is what impresses me the most," he said.

Once games get to the Top 10, the public then votes for their favorites.

A panelist of judges will then rank the top three.

The voting deadline is today; voters can play all of the games before they pick their favorite.

Possin, who has a background in computers and said he wants to go into cyber security, said the class helped build his skill set.

"It helped my knowledge of computers to know how a game is created," he said.

Robb said the class and the project could also inspire his future career choice.

"As a junior, it definitely does give me some influence in any kind of computer or coding field or game field at all, but I still have a long time to decide and I still don't really know, so I think this definitely does push me in a direction I was leaning towards," he said.