Kontrolerji | Make a Walking Sim Game
Kontrolerji are back! This year, the computer games creation series will be dedicated to the genre of walking simulators with an embedded Unreal Engine crash-course. During the workshops, you will create your own walking simulator game. Walk, talk, interact with objects and create an atmosphere! The game will be presented at the Adela festival in May and Slovenia Games conference in October. The workshop sessions will be co-mentored by renowned game designer and internet artist Nathalie Lawhead (creator of the multi-award-winning game *Everything is Going to Be OK*) and the series coordinator, media artist and game designer Brin Žvan (creator of the multi-award-winning game ONE BTN BOSSES).
The workshop is free of charge and suitable for complete beginners with no experience in coding. The applications are now closed.
Workshop course
The course will encompass a few days of tutorials and a few days of coworking. The course is designed so that during longer breaks between the workshop days you can work on the game on your own.
Monday, 13 April 2026 from 6pm to 9 pm
DAY 1: Paper prototyping
Creating a paper using post-it notes and other tangible objects to make a prototype that can be recreated in a game engine. We’re thinking about a character or autonomous object moving around a world and what can inhabit that world.
Wednesday, 15 April and Thursday, 16 April from 6pm to 9pm
DAYS 2 and 3: Starting in Unreal
Setting up Unreal and introduction to the UI, where what is, what does what on a basic level. Creating the initial map and discussing atmosphere (lighting and sky). Adding the player, player start, running the game, and how to do the initial setup. Walk and talk.
Wednesday, 22 April and Thursday, 23 April from 6pm to 9pm
DAYS 4 and 5: Unreal crash-course
Building a blockout with simple geometry (cubes, spheres, and planes) that's included in Unreal. Discussing simple collisions. Discussing materials, material instances, material types, textures, and shaders. Basic visual coding via blueprints. Building on the blockout with imported geometry. Custom 3D models, and importing them. Open source mesh libraries like thebasemesh, PBR libraries, and free assets on Fab. Overview of the folder structure of your project. Events, trigger boxes, and more blueprints.
Wednesday, 6 May from 6pm to 9pm
DAY 6: Coworking
Need motivation to work on the game, or help figuring out why the colliders don't work? Don’t worry, we’re here to keep you company and to google answers with you.
Wednesday, 20 May from 6pm to 9pm
DAY 7: Finishing up
It’s time for finishing touches and getting the game ready to be released on itch.io
Saturday, 30 May from 4pm to 8pm
PLAYTEST at ADELA
We will set up a booth at Adela Festival in Kino Šiška where we will invite friends, festivalgoers and passers-by to try our walking sim games.
Brin Žvan
Brin Žvan (1998) is a media artist and game designer. With an MA in Game Design from the IT University of Copenhagen (2023), they create games that use either too many or too few buttons. Their latest work is the game ONE BTN BOSSES (2024), in which the player battles her bosses with just one button. The game has been awarded multiple times and has been extremely well received by critics, boasting a score of 87/100 on Metacritic. Before that, they created Presenter Slides (2022), a bureaucratic adventure that received a nomination for the Best Student Game at the Independent Games Festival (2023, San Francisco). When Brin is not making games, they teach others how to. And when not teaching, they take care of plants or cook with friends.
Nathalie Lawhead
Nathalie Lawhead (1983) is an award-winning internet artist, software creator, and game designer. Their work is included in numerous collections, including Rhyzome ArtBase and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. They create at the controversial intersection of video games and art, challenging the way we live and work in our digital era with their experimental works. They publish their games (Everything is Going to be OK, Tetrageddon Games, Blue Suburbia, etc.) under the pseudonym AlienMelon on the itch.io platform.
