Federal Way middle schooler wins prize for video game design

Published 4:05 pm Friday, July 24, 2015

Brooklyn Humphrey was simply filling out her schedule when she decided to take a robotics class last year. Less than a year later she was on a plane to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to receive an award for video game design.

Brooklyn, an incoming eighth grade student at Sequoyah Middle School, had little interest in coding prior to the past school year. Her goal is to become an orthodontist in the future and she did not think of following in her father’s footsteps by working with code.

“I didn’t think I’d be interested,” Brooklyn said. “I thought it would be way too confusing. I already had an elective for orchestra and didn’t know what else I wanted to do, so I thought I would try something new.”

The choice paid off as Brooklyn became enamored with coding and eventually wanted to build a robot of her own. Her father, Kevin Humphrey, vetoed that idea because of the price. Instead, he suggested a video game.

She created her first game using Construct, a game engine used to create two-dimensional games. While it was a start, she wanted to challenge herself with a three-dimensional game.

After doing some research, her father thought that Unity would be the best choice of game engine to use to make a three-dimensional game. Unity has been used to make critically-acclaimed games such as “Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft,” “Temple Run,” “Ori and the Blind Forest,” “Kerbal Space Program” and “Threes.” Unity is also the default software development kit for the Wii U.

“Unity is a really good choice if you’re going to make a 3D game,” Humphrey said. “It’s also free, so it was an easier choice to make.”

“I did a tutorial for Unity through YouTube and it showed a ball that had to collect [boxes],” Brooklyn said. “I decided I wanted to do something kind of like that.”

She ended up creating “Maze Kraze,” a game in which you have to navigate a maze to collect coins with a ball. She looked at labyrinth designs online to influence the design of her maze.

The game was actually created before either of the two knew about the STEM Video Game Challenge. Humphrey found about about it from his coworkers. When she submitted it, Brooklyn was not too optimistic about her chances.

“I felt like there was such a little chance of winning,” Brooklyn said. “I sort of wanted to see what would happen. When I had found out I’d won, it was really cool. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it.”

The two did think Brooklyn’s chances increased by entering in the Unity category.

“I figured there wouldn’t be a ton of Unity submissions because you have to write code,” Humphrey said. “The other platforms are all applications you can use without code. They just need some artwork. There were some impressive pieces out there, but they didn’t have to write code to do it. I think that one of the crown jewels of Brooklyn’s accomplishment was that she had to go beyond what others did, especially for a middle schooler.”

They looked at the website and also saw that there were no winners in the Unity category last year and believed it indicated a low amount of submissions.

It turned out that around 75 other competitors had entered the Unity competition for middle schoolers.

In the end, it did not matter as Brooklyn took home the $3,000 prize, $2,000 of which was awarded to Sequoyah’s robotics program.

She is hoping that Sequoyah’s program will be able to use the money to buy another robot for students to use.

Brooklyn and her father were flown out to Pittsburgh for the ceremony to receive the prize and tour the city. Brooklyn also had to pitch “Maze Kraze” to the hundreds of people that showed up to the event.

Her favorite part of the trip was going to Schell Games, a video game development company. She and the other winners were able to test some “top secret games.”

The experience left Brooklyn with a heightened interest in video game development and something she would not mind doing if her first career choice as an orthodontist does not work out.

When she is not coding, Brooklyn enjoys playing basketball and volleyball. She has also joined the robotics club this summer and has been helping to build a robot to compete in competitions.

She hopes to get members of the club and her robotics class to all participate in the STEM Video Game Challenge next year. She intends to enter into the competition once again herself.