Games Design Summer Activities

Grab a deck chair and fire up your laptop—here’s our list of things to learn, read, watch, and follow over the summer.

Andy Lemon, Senior Lecturer for Games Design and Development, has carefully curated these friendly recommendations for you to explore before you arrive. How much (or how little) you do is totally up to you!

You might also want to check out these exciting Computing Summer Activities!

Brackeys: A free alternative to Unity

https://www.youtube.com/@Brackeys/

Brackeys is back on YouTube, now focusing on the Godot engine—a free, open-source alternative to Unity. It’s worth exploring! While Unity dominates commercial game development and our studies, it’s important to get familiar with different engines. Godot’s open-source nature makes it a great option to broaden your skills beyond Unity.

LinkedIn Learning

https://learning.linkedin.com/

All students have access to LinkedIn Learning through their University accounts. We encourage you to explore the site to upskill with its excellent resources. We recommend using these search terms to find the latest courses, as manual searches often uncover the most up-to-date content:

Adobe Cloud
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Premiere
C++ Programming
C# Programming
Game Maker
Godot
Python Programming
Unreal Engine
Unity Engine

Sebastian Lague: Advanced game development

https://www.youtube.com/@SebastianLague

Sebastian’s YouTube channel dives into advanced game development topics like texture generation, landmass algorithms, liquid simulation, and shader programming. Though the content can be complex for beginners, it’s a great channel to explore if you want to get a taste of advanced programming techniques.

Teach yourself Demoscene in 14 days

https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_days

This free GitHub resource, created by Andy’s friend PS, teaches you about the demoscene in just 14 days, with supporting materials and a YouTube seminar.

The demoscene is a global underground digital arts movement dating back to the early days of home computing, covering music, real-time graphics, shader coding, and more. It’s a great way to deepen your technical skills—and it helped Andy break into the games industry!

The Art of Code

https://www.youtube.com/@TheArtofCodeIsCool

This resource offers videos on advanced programming—especially shader coding and generative visuals—explained clearly and accessibly. It’s a great way to level up your skills and improve your ability to showcase your work visually, which is key to building a stronger, more impactful portfolio.

Udemy

https://www.udemy.com/

This site offers excellent materials for learning game development, programming, and design theory. It’s a commercial platform requiring a paid subscription, but the course team highly recommends exploring it.

Andy's Interesting Stuff: YouTube Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCIgXKpg4ME&list=PL5s-a6AVJjwlDDKW-ym2mqBf5TWL6t-PG

This curated playlist of 200+ videos, handpicked by Andy over the past year and a half, includes content both related and adjacent to game development. Some videos are designed to inspire your game design thinking, while others are just for fun or a welcome break from study.

Ars Technica - War Stories

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKBPwuu3eCYkScmqpD9xE7UZsszweVO0n

A wonderful YouTube series exploring the challenges of historical game development, focusing on technical setbacks and how developers overcame them, without the usual hype or self-promotion.

Game Developers Conference

https://www.youtube.com/@Gdconf

The GDC YouTube channel offers free access to highlights from one of the world’s leading game development conferences, including insightful post-mortems on classics like Sonic, Doom, and Myst. As part of the GDD degree, you also get full access to the GDC Vault, which includes a much larger archive of talks and materials—login details are available via the university Discord.

Real Hack History

https://www.youtube.com/@realhackhistory

Expanding your knowledge beyond games is key to sparking fresh ideas. The Real Hack Histories YouTube channel is a great (and entertaining) way to do just that—offering self-made documentaries and rare archived footage on the history of computing and hacking.

10 Print - Nick Montfort et al.

https://10print.org

A beautiful, free book exploring creative code with one-line BASIC programs for the Commodore 64. Inspiring and weirdly mesmerizing.

The Art of Computer Programming - Donald Knuth

A legendary five-volume series (with more on the way!)—an essential deep dive into programming theory and practice.

Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld

A jazz pianist’s obsessive and hilarious attempt to master Atari’s Breakout. A unique lens on gaming and learning.

Design as Art - Bruno Munari

A witty and timeless look at the intersections of design, art, and everyday life. Still totally relevant for creatives and techies alike.

Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master: Pong, Atari, and the Dawn of the Video Game - David Kushner

A fun, graphic novel-style history of video games told through the rise of Atari.

The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner

A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the classic game's development, told through Jordan’s own diary entries.

Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family - Jordan Mechner

An award-winning graphic novel blending family history with Mechner’s journey as a game developer.

The C Programming Language - Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie

The classic text from the creators of C. Great for understanding the roots of many modern languages—and still super useful today.

Game Developer

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/

Game Developer (formerly known as Gamasutra) is a respected, industry-led site packed with articles on all aspects of game development—from pre-production and design to technical deep dives and post-release analysis. Its content is driven by developers themselves, making it an invaluable resource for real-world insights and industry perspectives.

Games Industry Biz

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/

A go-to hub for news, insights, and in-depth articles on the technical and production side of game development. It’s a great site for staying up to date with the latest developments in the industry.

Game Maker

https://gamemaker.io/en

GameMaker is a great 2D game engine that offers a different experience from Unity and Unreal’s 3D-focused workflows. Widely used in industry for prototyping and developing full commercial titles, it’s quick and easy to get started—perfect for testing ideas or building complete games. You can develop directly in GameMaker or transfer proven concepts into other engines later.

Ink by Inkle

https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

Ink by Inkle is a powerful narrative scripting tool and testing environment that every games student should explore. With integration for both Unity and Unreal, it allows you to experiment with storytelling, link up with external editors, and bring interactive narratives into your own projects with ease.

Itch.io Game Jam List

https://itch.io/jams/upcoming

Itch.io's Game Jam List is another excellent resource for tracking upcoming game jams. Whether you're looking to sharpen your skills or collaborate with others, it’s a great way to discover events you might want to join.

Let's Make a Game

https://letsmakeagame.net/game-jams-calendar/

Game Jam Calendar is a simple, easy-to-use tool that helps you stay on top of upcoming game jams—perfect for finding events to join over the summer break and beyond!

MCV/Develop

https://mcvuk.com/

MCV/Develop is a go-to site for news and insights across all areas of game development and marketing. Originally two separate magazines—MCV, which focused on marketing and post-production, and Develop, which covered the technical and creative sides—they merged into MCV/Develop a few years ago. It’s a great resource for staying informed and deepening your understanding of the full game development pipeline.

The Register

https://www.theregister.com/

The Register is one of the web’s leading technology news sites, covering everything from cybersecurity and software development to product launches and bleeding-edge tech. While its focus goes beyond gaming, it’s an excellent resource for staying on top of emerging technologies and trends—well worth checking regularly if you want to stay informed about the wider tech landscape.

Shader Toy

https://www.shadertoy.com/

Shadertoy is a fantastic resource for exploring thousands of impressive GLSL shader effects, all running in real-time in your browser. You can view and edit the code live, making it a powerful tool for experimenting, learning, and building your understanding of shader programming.

Time Extension

https://www.timeextension.com/

A relatively new site focused on indie gaming and retro development news. A growing trend in game dev is creating and re-releasing games for classic consoles like the NES, Game Boy, and Mega Drive—often as fully boxed, physical cartridges. It’s definitely one to keep an eye on!

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