Note: This is a 3-part workshop, taking place on Thursdays July 3, 10, and 17, from 7-10PM. Registering here signs you up for all three workshops.

If you’re interested in learning how to program video games or other interactive digital media, Stencyl -- a freely-available, beginner-friendly 2D game engine -- is an excellent place to start. You’ll learn how to build a game with movement, physics, graphics, and interactivity, and also learn core coding and logic flow concepts that are applicable to almost all programming languages and frameworks.

Games created with Stencyl can run on iOS, Windows, Mac, and on web browsers!

At the end of this workshop series, you'll be able to make a simple interactive game with movement, physics, graphics, and music. And if you've never done any programming before, you'll also gain an understanding of basic concepts like variables, conditional statements, loops, and functions.

Want to see some examples? You can visit the Stencyl Game Showcase page, or check these games out:

• Here's an example of a simple project, which took a total of about 7 hours to make.
• Here's a more complex project, representing 40-50 hours of work.
• For good measure, here and here are some other games made in Stencyl.

What, if any, prerequisite knowledge should students have?

No programming experience is necessary, but a general level of comfort and facility with computers and software is expected. If you’ve ever used complex software like Photoshop or Excel, or maintained a blog, or experimented with HTML, you’ll be fine.

What do I need to bring?

A laptop! Be sure to download and install Stencyl before class: http://www.stencyl.com/download/

About the Instructor:

Cecily Carver is the co-director of Dames Making Games Toronto (DMG), a community organization aiming to support women interested in making, playing, and changing games. Through DMG, she's led and facilitated numerous workshops teaching introductory game design, programming concepts, and the game development process. She's spoken at IndieCade and IndieCade East, FanExpo, DigiFest, GRAND, and Feminists in Games. As a developer, she's made games for the SummerWorks Festival and the musical Ride the Cyclone, and her games have been shown at DigiFest and the TIFF Nexus Arcade. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Alberta.

Policies: InterAccess is unable to refund or credit cancellations less than one week prior to the workshop date. InterAccess reserves the right to reschedule or cancel the workshop should circumstances require.