We were welcomed enthusiastically by the Schools and Colleges Liaison Team before heading straight to one of the computing suites and issued with login details to begin our first hour and half session. There the pupils were introduced to Unify – a platform for designing games.

Having been treated to lunch by the university, pupils were keen to develop their games further.  It’s amazing how time flies when you’re engaged in something.  So, it didn’t seem very long before we were on a tour around the department. There was a real buzz among the pupils as we visited computer laboratories dedicated to things like computer forensics, cyber security, virtual reality and more games design.

Eisha in Year 10, one of the participants, gave a description of their day. "We started the day with an introduction to the video game engine, Unity, which is used by many game developers across the globe and were briefed about our project. Throughout the day we learnt the basics of the program as well as creating our own video games; by the end of the day we were all customising our games to make them unique to ourselves. None of this would have been possible without the help of Derby University’s head of game design lecturer. After our afternoon of coding we had a tour of some of the university’s main campus, which was a great insight into university life and how things work at Derby University. Overall, it was a great day and we learnt lots about game development and the hours that go into making just one small part of a game run smoothly."