‘It was my creative outlet’

Cats wearing lemons and limes as helmets, pitted against one another on a quest for collectibles. It’s a goofy idea, but one that makes for a fun game.

This silly concept is what Skyler Barron ’22, MFA ’23, a current Becker School of Design & Technology professor, made into a video game back in 2017 when she was a high school student participating in the Summer Game Studio.

“We decided we wanted to work on something ridiculous,” Barron recalls. “My team and I saw pictures of cats with lemon and lime hats on, so we made a game where the ‘lime cats’ and ‘lemon cats’ are on different teams trying to gather collectibles.”

Summer Game Studio is a two-week game design program that immerses students in the Becker School of Design & Technology. This pre-college program teaches all aspects of game design and development — from concept art to coding; from sound design to playtesting — and empowers students with the skills to create their own video games from scratch. Students learn from the same faculty who have made the BSDT’s undergraduate program earn the No. 3 ranking in the world by The Princeton Review. During her time at Summer Game Studio, Barron and her peers conceptualized, built, and launched “Lemon Cat.”

Players, operating as the lemon cat, must navigate around the lime cats in search of the collectibles. Everything from brainstorming the lighthearted concept to animation to programming was an enjoyable team effort.

“I’m passionate about art, and I got to let that shine while working on our project,” says Barron, who studied interactive media at Clark. “It was so much fun to work with people with similar interests.”

Participating in Summer Game Studio made Barron decide to enroll in the BSDT program.

“At the end of high school, I wasn’t sure if game design was going to be my major and didn’t feel confident about where I would go if it was my major,” she says. “Summer Game Studio let me see that I love game design and helped me make that big decision.”

Robert Matzkin ’26, a computer science major and interactive media minor, participated in Summer Game Studio in 2022, just weeks before starting his first semester at Clark. He recalls learning about programming with the guidance of BSDT Professor Nevin Flanagan as he made his video game “Rot,” an infinite runner game that required players to exterminate vicious plants that had overrun a kingdom.

“It was a lot of debugging, a lot of back-and-forth,” Matzkin recalls. “It sounds like tedious work, but it was my creative outlet. I felt inspired every day to wake up, go to class, and code into the night.”

Distributing and delegating tasks to make a game gave the students a real sense of professional teamwork, Matzkin says. “Getting a taste of game design before actually starting my education here gave me the confidence that I picked the right school.”

The program is a crash course in what it’s like to be a college student. Participants live in a Clark residence hall and dine on campus as part of the full experience.

“Summer Game Studio prepared me to live in a social environment with lots of people and gave me a good idea of how a college class would feel,” says Autumn Powers ’27, an interactive media major and participant in Summer Game Studio 2022, who worked on Rot with Matzkin. The program was also invaluable in helping Powers hone a love of 3D art.

“It was a whole lot of information, but it was fun and digestible,” Powers says. “I created art for my game with a lot of tools and learned how to be efficient with what I made.”

The fast pace of Summer Game Studio teaches students to analyze problems and find quick solutions. It’s a process Barron experienced herself as a student and now oversees as a professor.

“Any struggles you face making a game, you need to overcome within two weeks,” Barron says. “Students pull themselves together and focus on what they need to do to complete their task. You see them end up really proud of their project.”