Whether you’re just starting to learn or you’ve been making games for years, join the Unity Global Student Challenge to show the world what you can create!

At Unity, we’ve seen students create amazing projects from competitions to the classroom to their dorm room. When given the right tools and inspiration to create, they turn their ideas into reality. In just 24 hours at a hackathon or game jam, these minds are able to produce playable prototypes. With a little more time, these prototypes can turn into something even better – becoming projects with high quality and polish that enable students to land dream jobs. It’s because of these inspiring students that we’re excited to share with you the Unity Global Student Challenge, an opportunity to learn, build projects, and be proud to add them to your portfolio.

With three months to bring something to life, take the time to pull a team together, come up with ideas, create something, and share it with the community! Anyone from Unity beginners to experts is welcome to participate!

The Theme

As part of the challenge, we want to see projects that can help “Teach People Something.” Mediums like games and VR/AR have the ability to inspire action, compassion, and problem solving, and boost understanding.

We’ve seen this happen in many places; for example, at Games for Change this past summer, students and teachers created games to educate people on social issues like Kindness and Empathy or Wildlife Conservation. Students researched their topic areas, identified key issues they wanted to tackle, and developed games and experiences to increase understanding of the issue they chose.

Our edtech friends at Filament Games created experiences that allow students to dive into the worlds of famous women in science and technology. Participants put on a headset and walk through the labs of these influential scientists, learning the history of their work in Breaking Boundaries VR.

Teaching people can even be as simple as helping them build a skill. In a project started by students, One Hand Clapping enables the player to influence the world through their singing, teaching voice control and personal empowerment in a visually stimulating way.

In highlighting student work, our friends at The Rookies helped to show the level of quality students can achieve. The interactive world of TerraChi allows users to influence the world around them using Tai Chi inspired movements. TerraChi was developed by the 2017 Masters cohort of the UTS Animal Logic Academy.

TerraChi was developed using Unity and utilizes advanced machine learning to detect five unique movements using the VR controllers. It won “VR Game of the Year” in the 2018 ROOKIES Awards and was selected to showcase at the 2018 Sydney Film Festival – VR Hub, where people could get a hands-on experience in TerraChi.

Get Started

So, what are you waiting for? Start CREATING! Take in some inspiration from the team behind One Hand Clapping:

“Have a cornerstone – The focus for teams should be, “What are you trying to teach?”, grounded in reality/science/personal experience and bring that out through the experience.” – Thomas Wilson, Game Director on One Hand Clapping

“Don’t be afraid to throw things away – if it’s not working or if it’s flawed, really rethink what you’re trying to build. Don’t keep polishing it if it doesn’t work. Toss out the concept and get rid of it and start again.” – Zach Lower, Lead Designer on One Hand Clapping

If you need some help getting started, check out our Learn page to access tons of tutorials and projects to try! Start building your own game with the 3D Game Kit or jump straight into the challenge! The Unity Global Student Challenge opens on Oct 29 and runs until January 31 2019.

Join the Challenge on Connect

Photo Credit to TerraChi from Animal Logic Academy, One Hand Clapping from USC Games, and Breaking Boundaries VR by Filament Games.