(Left to right: Liam Mullen and Josh Skilton, Trinity School.  Cameron Watson, West Bridgford Comprehensive School)

There are many things I expect to write about in relation to STEM activities – I just never thought it would be about thousands of zombies… 

On Friday, we braved the cold and accompanied 3 Student STEM Reporters to GameCity 3, the Videogame festival designed to bring the people who make games, together with the people who love them. 

After meeting in the Market Square, the students were given their press passes and GameCity Passport, for VIP access for the day.  The students’ first stop was Malt Cross. Here we investigated a number of award wining games at the Indiecade International Festival of Independent Games.  We met the creator of Machinarium, who took us through the process of how he designed the story of a little robot who has been unjustly thrown out to the scrap yard behind the city. 

After chatting to real life designers, we headed up to the ‘View from the Top’ gallery for a ‘hands-on workshop’ by North Nottingham E-Learning centre, to learn how to design and make our own game. 

We then went back to the Market Square to see Nottingham’s army of Zombies gathering to attempt to break the world record of total number of zombies gathered in one place.  This record, amazingly, was broken!! 1,227 zombies turned out in the Square to dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller (199 more than the previous attempt). 

After an inspirational day as press officers, the students departed to work on their reports – so watch out for these.  In the meantime, for more information about this great festival visit www.gamecity.org.