Vandal Overnight Games attendees filled the Idaho Commons Saturday night, crowding around tables, computers and televisions.
“It’s basically a convention,” said Michael Bonar, a University of Idaho virtual technology and design student.
For his part, Bonar set up a table advertising his “overnight art” where gamers could request sketches of their favorite characters.
Gavin Green | Argonaut
Polymorphic Games employee Landon Wright tests out Darwin’s Demons during Vandal Overnight Games Saturday in the Idaho
“A couple of years ago I decided to take sketches because I wasn’t really participating in the video gaming,” Bonar said.
Bonar’s table proved popular Saturday, with students flocking to request drawings of various game characters. As 11 p.m. rolled around, another artist joined Bonar to help reach the ever-elusive end of his request list.
The artists weren’t the only ones hanging around late into the night. The event officially spanned 12 hours from 1 p.m. Saturday to 1 a.m. Sunday, and stayed busy through the night.
“There are always some people still having fun at 1 a.m.,” said UI extension website designer and board game aficionado Michelle Boese-Empey.
Boese-Empey said she has been a member of the Palouse Board Gamers since she moved to the area in 2009. She said she joined the group hoping to find a sense of community in a new town. Eight years later, she works at Vandal Overnight Games to share that sense of community with a new group of game geeks.
“This is like our Super Bowl of the semester,” Boese-Empey said with a laugh. “One of the things I really like about this event is that it’s participatory, and we get to use our heads to play.”
It was clear the “analog” games were a favorite. Among the fancy screens and flashing consoles, the board game room stayed packed. Maybe gamers were drawn to the wide selection of games available, the social aspect of face-to-face gameplay or the chance to rest their eyes from a display for a while.
The board game room, although popular, was only one facet of the large event. In the next room over, for example, an interactive video game called “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” had a group of players shouting instructions across a curtain to another player diffusing a bomb on a computer screen.
There were multiple low-stress activities at the event as well. Wandering around the Commons, event-goers could find Virtual Reality headset-clad gamers waving remotes to repair cars or cook pizzas, miniature block robots assembled in seconds by even the least technologically savvy participants, elaborately dressed cosplayers and more.
At the entrance to the Commons stood Polymorphic Games with their computer game “Darwin’s Demons.”
Dreamed up by two UI professors and built by a team of undergraduate students, the game resembles “Space Invaders” with a Darwinian twist.
“The enemies in the game evolve,” said Sam Heck, lead programmer for Polymorphic Games’s summer 2017 student team. “The idea is that evolution always wins.”
Heck spent two summers on the game programming team, and the computer science student said she was excited by the chance to put her studies to use before graduation.
“Students who work with us get actual job experience in their field,” Heck said.
Several of the groups tabling at the event were confident the fields of both video and board gaming were only beginning to grow and adapt for a modern audience.
For some UI employees, gaming unexpectedly found its way into their career in the form of the UI Leadership Invitational Contest. In the contest, UI President Chuck Staben, Dean of Students Blaine Eckles, Vice President of Finance Brian Foisy and Vice President of Infrastructure Daniel Ewart participated in a Mario Kart tournament. As spectators watched the university leaders race on a big screen, Eckles pulled ahead of the competition, seizing the victory.
“This is a lifelong dream come true,” Eckles said, accepting his trophy from Joe Vandal.
Eckles, who has participated in the Invitational Contest for two years now, said he remembers when Mario Kart first came out and never thought he’d compete in the game as part of his job.
The Mario Kart victory was the highlight of an all-around exciting event, Eckles said.
“It’s great seeing students engaging in all of these different activities,” Eckles said. “My favorite part of the day is just watching students laughing, having a lot of fun and connecting with each other.”
Beth Hoots can be reached at [email protected]