Building Virtual Worlds (1st-Year Course)
3105 – Wings of Trouble
VR
1 Player
In this game, you take on the role of a mother bird trying to find food for her babies. There will be wing controllers for the player to wear and control the game. The mother bird sees a couple of food stands that have hot dogs and French fries that the bird will try to steal and bring back to her babies.
Team: Programmers: Aya Al Sabahi, Jiakun Wu; Artists: Jason Jiang, Sapphire Ruan; Sound Designer: Liam Neely
3105 – KungFu Penguin
Jam-o-Drum
4 Players
This is a game where four players play as penguins, collecting stones on the ground to build their home. The stones are limited, so the penguins need to kick the other penguins to collect enough stones. During the process, be careful of the falling ice and killer whale.
Team: Producer/Sound: Yilin Shi; Programmers: Field Luo, Eyana Yan; Artists: Victor Lu, Frank Lin
3304 – Overstuffed
Jam-o-Drum
4 Players
Compete as one of four types of dumpling to become King! Eat as much stuffing as you can while fending off enemies with your weapon, and escape threats using jump pads that hurtle you across the board! Whoever ends up in the cook pot with the most stuffing wins, so ya gotta play smart to keep the crown!
Team: Artists: Aidan Terry, Esther Jeon; Programmers: Linda Wang, Haru Zhu; Sound Designer: Steve Wang; Co-producers: Steve Wang, Aidan Terry
Project Teams (2nd-Year Projects)
3306 – Sunset Jive & Hive
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Billy Jo Jive Super Private Eye books and animated shorts created in 1976 by Ted & John Shearer, the Sunset, Jive, & Hive team is creating a themed location-based, mixed-media interactive experience. Guests are invited to join Jive’s detective agency and explore his crime lab to help him and Smart Susie Sunset solve mysteries. In this escape room-like experience for youth aged 10-12, guests must communicate and collaborate to solve a series of puzzles that lead to the mystery’s culprit. Our team aims to bring the transformational impact of the original work forward to the next generation with a focus on positive representation, gender equality, critical thinking skills, and literacy through culture and Jive-talkin’ slang.
Team: Josh Kaplan, Benjamin Walker, Eliana Huang, Moe Aguilar, Fay Li, Azu De
Instructors: John Dessler, Tom Corbett
3323 – ReNuShu
ReNuShu is a student team from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, partnering with Magnes AG to design an exergame powered by smart shoes. Our vision is to make gait training and rehabilitation more motivating, engaging, and socially connected. By blending playful interaction with meaningful feedback, we aim to help users track their progress, celebrate improvement, and stay committed to mobility practice. Through collaboration with a physical therapy clinic, we are shaping our prototype with real-world insights, moving toward a game experience that makes rehabilitation both effective and enjoyable.
Team: Isabella Chen, James Huang, Victor Jhou, Esme Han, Yingjie Wang
Instructors: Charles Johnson, Heather Kelley
3325- Trinity
It Takes Three is an cross-platform asymmetric collaboration game.
One player will use a Virtual Reality (VR) device, one will use a gaming console, and one will use a mobile platform. They collaborate to overcome challenges together.
It takes three to be connected, inspired, and fun. Team Trinity experiments with unique interactions on each platform, and hopes to deliver an experience that you can play with two other friends at a game night.
Team: Max Zhang, Jerry Zheng, Xueyan Liu, Vector Liu, Yifan Jiang, Helen Yang
Instructors: Brenda Bakker Harger, Scott Stevens
3327- Little Owl Construction Co.
Little Owl Construction Co. is a five-person team of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. The team is working with ETC Outreach, Extension, and Engagement to build a prototype of a physical interactive platform in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania to get middle schoolers interested in higher education in the entertainment technology industry. By leveraging the design methodologies and team-based learning used at the ETC as inspiration, they aim to create an experience where children can take on interdisciplinary roles and tell a story collaboratively using creative technology.
Team: Courtney Singleton, Devika Santosh, Ean McFadden, Jasmin Ali-Diaz, Melanie Danver
Instructors: Shirley Saldamarco, Drew Davidson
3404 – 270° Fun
Team 270° Fun is developing a massive local multiplayer racing game focused on building community through sports. Designed for the Cavern system at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), the project utilizes the Cavern, a 270° curved projection screen and a 20-foot-wide interactive play area, enabling dynamic local multiplayer interactions within virtual environments.
The project’s goal is to find a balance between having player agency and still feeling like part of the audience. Players will work together as cheerleaders and fans, cheering for their favorite teams, affecting the drivers behavior and causing overtakes, crashes, and fast cornering. This teamwork will evoke a sense of belonging in the player, deepening their relationship with players supporting the same team.
Team: Enn Ruan, Alivia Park, Jose Mireles, Dennis Sun, Sally Jin, Yuhuai Huang
Instructors: Mike Christel, Drew Davidson
3410 – Ascent
Ascent is a single-player VR hiking experience that uses simple body movement and foot-tracking technology to turn hiking into a relaxing journey. Players move through stylized natural landscapes, guided by ambient sound, calming music, and scenery that reveals itself naturally as they continue walking. Rather than aiming for a final destination, Ascent encourages players to slow down, breathe, and enjoy the peaceful experience of moving through nature.
Team: William Zhang, Felix Choi, Jialan Dong, Joy Lim, Xiaofan Zhang, Zhanqi Yang
Instructors: Ricardo Washington, Jonathan Walton
3412 – EchoTrio
This is a project that explores how two AI-driven characters can engage in conversation with a real human user. If time allows, we’ll build a pipeline that lets developers create their own characters and interactive experiences.
These AI characters can be fictional or inspired by real historical figures, and we see strong potential for applications in cultural and educational settings such as museums.
Team: Brian He, Shiwei Hong, Terri Lim, Aurora Liu, Ye Wei
Instructors: Mo Mahler, Shirley Saldamarco
3414 – ByteMX
Ruach Bicycle Club (founded by Mike and Markisha White) is committed to creating life-forming experiences for kids (K-12) using bicycling as the platform. Team ByteMX is developing a project for the club’s STEM educational programming, an important part of their mission. The team is creating a digital simulation program and game that will facilitate an upcoming competition among the students to design and model a pump track to build in a park. The students will be able to first build preliminary prototypes using 3D-printed track pieces, recreate those designs in our program and expand their designs with additional flexibility, and test out the tracks they have designed through a BMX riding simulation game. Our project aims to teach students about engineering as well as the value that pump track parks can add to a community.
Team: Grace Rodríguez Gomez, Nellie Tonev, Ethan Zhu, Michelle Fan, Wendy Wen
Instructors: Scott Stevens, Ruth Comley
3418 – Kicks Lab
Transformational game Kicks Lab empowers youth ages 13-18 to see themselves as future STEAM innovators. By combining hands-on shoe design, engineering, and game-based learning, students turn abstract concepts into tangible outcomes, building both technical skills and confidence.
Team: Jiwon Park, Libby Egan, Samantha Lai, Skye Gao, Steven Wang
Instructors: Charles Johnson, Ricardo Washington
3422 – Tacit
TACIT is an interdisciplinary R&D project exploring how vibrotactile sensations from haptic gloves can enhance and shape emotional moments in virtual reality.
While haptic sensation is widely used for simulation, training, and basic sensory feedback, TACIT investigates its potential for emotional storytelling. The final deliverable will be a cohesive VR experience driven by haptic cues that create a complete emotional arc.
Each part of our design will be guided by one key question: “Does haptic interaction, combined with visuals and sound, evoke the intended emotion?” First, we will focus on rapidly prototyping a variety of haptic patterns to identify moments with strong emotional potential. Afterwards, we will design and build out a VR experience where haptic moments are meaningfully integrated and essential to the emotional impact of the overall journey.
Team: Alex Hall, Jack Chou, Jing Chung, Michael Wong, Winnie Tsai, Yufei Chen
Instructors: Heather Kelley, Vivian Shen
Tech Exhibition
3405 – Robotics and Spatial Audio
Unitree G1 Humanoid Robot – meet our newest robot friend.
Quasi – the ETC’s very own emotionally driven robotic character.
Wave Field Synthesis – a speaker array that creates “tangible” 3D sound.