Farming robots? Mythological characters Orpheus and Eurydice? Sword-fighting soldiers? They will all gather at 2 p.m. Aug. 4 as students debut four new video games at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, UCF’s graduate video game-development program. The presentations will be at UCF’s Center for Emerging Media, 500 W. Livingston St. in downtown Orlando on the site of the future UCF Downtown campus.

The games being shown are:

  • Hollowed, based loosely on the ancient tale of doomed lovers Orpheus and Eurydice, players solve puzzles in the underworld using cooperation between two characters they control.
  • The Draft, a virtual-reality game where you play as a soldier in a gladiator sport.
  • Master Key,  players use a tether gun and wall, running to escape an alien planet.
  • The Logician, a farming game with robots that aims to inspire an interest in programming.

    • This will be the first time the public will see the completed projects that students have been working on for seven months as their master’s thesis. FIEA offers a 16-month master’s degree in interactive entertainment and was recently named the No. 2 graduate game-development program in the world by the Princeton Review.

    The presentation is free and open to the public. Faculty, staff and students will be available to comment on any of the projects. FIEA will be livestreaming daily interviews with the teams July 31-Aug. 3 at 1 p.m. on their Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ucffiea. The final presentation will be livestreamed at FIEA’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/ucffiea.

    Because construction for UCF Downtown has started, guests are encouraged to visit FIEA’s directions page for parking instructions at https://fiea.ucf.edu/home/directions/.