I decided to create a game called Zâmbesti. The word is Romanian, and it means smile. The game was based around this particular tweet from Molydeux:

“Imagine living in a world where all anyone can do is hurt each other. You on the other hand, your only ability is to hug those around you.”

The game's title screen

This tweet reminded me of a Romanian friend of mine named Nina, who is studying with me at the IT University of Copenhagen. I quickly decided to create a small game with Nina as the main character, where she had to go around and hug everyone in order to beat the level. The catch is that the enemies can shoot at Nina, at each other and at enemies that Nina has already hugged! Since I didn’t manage to convince anybody to take part in the Molydeux Game Jam with me, and I really wanted to take part, I had to settle on a very small game idea, since apart from programming and music, I also had to tackle the art style of the game. To simplify things, and also to fit in with the natural 8-bit feel that Flixel provides, I decided to have pixel art for the art in the game, as well as trying to keep the music as simple and minimalistic as possible by using square waves, sine waves and other simple waves.

Below is a small post-mortem as well as the thought process I went through while creating the game.

• Collect your thoughts together

I wrote down everything that I thought needed to be done

As soon as I felt that I had found a direction I wanted to take the game in, I started writing my ideas down on paper and on a whiteboard. This was important, since I was able to go back to them later and verify my tasks or see what tasks I had left to do. I decided to group my tasks into 3 different sections, namely Programming, Art and Sound. I wrote down every single task that I had to do, including the mundane ones that I felt should not take me long. This was important since even though I had planned ahead and written down all the tasks that I thought I had to do, there were still a few more that I had forgotten. Admittedly, foreseeing what needs to be done takes practice.

I could have easily started with the art or with the music, but with just 48 hours to work with and only 1 person, the crucial things needed to be done first. By the end of the game jam, I estimated that 29 hours had been spent on programming and debugging. My main priority in making this game was to make a small and polished game, so several design choices I made during the 48 hours reflected this priority. Since I wanted the game to feature Nina, another priority was to have the art done.

Although this was the first time I was going to start (and eventually finish) programming a game in ActionScript 3.0 using FlashDevelop, I was already somewhat familiar with how the language worked. I also used Flixel, which easily structured my game. This made it easy to jump in and get started, without having to read through manuals describing the different quirks of the language, or how to successfully get the recommended IDE up and running.

For music, I used Ableton Live, simply because it’s a DAW that I’m familiar with and comfortable working in. This allowed me to transfer my music ideas from my head to the computer. I also used Microsoft Paint to draw the character art and tile sets. The program sfxr is great in that it randomly plays with square waves, sine waves, sawtooth waves and white noise to generate new sounds, making it easy to create the sound effects you need.

Since I wanted the game to be extendible infinitely and didn’t want to go through the trouble of designing levels, I deciding on implementing an algorithm that could generate the levels for me. I decided on implementing a maze generation algorithm, but when I researched the problem further, I realized that most of the algorithms were for thin walled mazes, where the walls were the cell borders in the grid. I wanted to implement thick walled mazes, where any cell in the grid could be either a path or a wall. I looked through different algorithms and maze classifications on Think Labyrinth!, as well as downloading a program called Daedalus which implemented all of the algorithms, making it easy to see what my mazes could look like.

I managed to have a playable prototype by the end of the the 48 hours with minutes to spare. The game’s profile on the Molydeux Game Jam website can be found here, and the game is hosted on my website and can be played here.

I intend to finish the game by continuing to debug some nasty problems that I didn’t fix in time, as well as continuing to work on the art and the music. The game’s source code will also be released when it’s done, and I also intend to release the music separately for people to download for free, so stay tuned!

The exhibition was very small and informal, and this allowed us to speak to the people who were behind the project itself. One project that I found interesting was Momo‘s project, which allowed people to use a dropper to put colours on a slide. A camera above the slide picked up the size and position of the colour droplets and the computer interpreted this input as sound. This allowed people to create music by spacing out the coloured drops appropriately. The other interesting project was Andrew‘s project, which allowed the user to record a sound and then interpret the sound wave as different shaped circles.  The circles could then be printed out and one could physically build the sound wave.

I felt that both projects were interesting due to the representation of sound in other mediums, such as colour, as well as physically representing it. Particularly interesting was Momo’s idea of generating sound, since both position, size and colour of the droplet affected the type of sound produced.

After the exhibition, I attended a VJ session at Nikolaj Kunsthallen. In short, this particular session involved laser beams of different colours, sizes and shapes being projected onto the walls of a former church, with droning soundscapes being played in the background. The experience was nothing short of incredible, and most of the crowd lay down on the floor or on the provided cushions to look up at the light show. Nikolaj Kunsthallen also had an ongoing exhibition, and one particular exhibit that struck me was Bill Viola’s The Night Journey, which is a cross between a video game and an art project.

It was exhibited in a dark room with black walls. Participants could sit down on a black bench and face a large screen on the opposite side of the room. The participant could also use an Xbox controller to interact with the game. Movement was only done by going forwards and backwards, and by strafing left or right, and players could also press X to reflect on the current location or situation. It was a very haunting, immersive and thought-provoking experience, and at one point, I was so into the game that I had the fright of my life when Terry suddenly walked in on us to see what we were doing. A trailer for the project can be seen here.

Endless Magic

More recently, I sat down with 4 other guys to play a game of Magic: The Gathering for the first time in 4-5 years. We first started off by playing small monocolour 30 card quick-start decks, but quickly moved on into playing a format called Endless Magic. The basic idea behind the format was that players could choose to attack any other player, and once a player was out, he restarts the game and has 3 turns of immunity  to get back in game. This allowed everybody to have a winning chance, and powerful players were instantly ganged up on and defeated. In our version of the format, we kept score by counting the number of player kills we achieved, and the first person to 5 was declared the winner.

I received a green Elf deck, where most of the cards were from Onslaught. This allowed me to create a large army very quickly, and the addition of cards like Overrun made that army scarier. Martin was playing a black/white deck that mostly contained Spirit creatures, backed up by lifelink, flying and discard spells. Johannes was playing a black Rogue deck which was very heavy on discard spells, as well as prowl and +1/+1 counters. Max was playing a black/white token creation deck, and Ezze was playing a red Goblin deck. Later on, Søren joined the game with a blue control deck.

The beginning of the game tested the waters by feeling the strengths of particular players and their decks. Nobody was left unchecked, and as one individual player got stronger, the rest of the players ganged up on him. During the midgame however, once we had gotten a feel of which were the strongest decks, some players were deemed more of a threat than others. Johannes, Max and myself were constantly being attacked, even when being defenceless, simply because our decks were considered more powerful. Alliances were formed and broken many times, and Martin likened the gameplay style to the Cold War at one point, where everybody was scared of attacking simply because they would then get attacked back. As several players starting approaching 5 kills, other players made sure that that opportunity would be denied, simply because that particular player was close to winning.

I have two memorable plays from that session. The first memorable play was a particularly destructive Overrun with several Elves and Insect tokens, taking out both Søren and Johannes. This made a lot of enemies very quickly, and my deck was deemed a dangerous threat. The second memorable play was at the very end of the Endless Magic game. I was relentlessly being attacked, and I was on my 4th kill. Although I had a sizeable army of Elves and 1/1 Insect tokens, they would not be able to punch through any players defenses. I decided to use Bloodline Shaman to go through my deck as quickly as possible to find creatures that I could use, so that I could attack the weakest player and get a few points of damage. Up comes an Overrun, which I have to discard, and at that point, I lost all chances of winning the game. Max was later declared the winner, ending a 5 hour game.

Semester 2 has started at ITU, and I’m already extremely busy. I guess that’s partly my fault though, since I’ve decided to assign myself twice the workload. Apart from the 3 courses I’m meant to be taking this year, which I will explain later, I’m also continuing work on Sun Valve,  the game that I made last semester in a team for the Game Design course, as well as continuing work on Mussades, the game that I made in another team during the Nordic Gam Jam 2o12. I’m also starting the second module of Danish lessons, which means that I should be kept very busy this coming semester.

Game Development

The main bulk of this semester is a 15ECTS course called Game Development. The concept is similar to Game Design from last semester, groups of people making games over a certain time period. However, this time round, the groups are bigger, the games must be 3D, and we have 3 months to create a polished vertical slice. Whereas in Game Design, we were working together in teams of 6, in Game Development, we are working in larger teams of 7 or 8. I volunteered for the role of project manager this semester and so far, it’s been an interesting challenge co-ordinating and guiding people. We’ve more or less settled on a vague idea of a concept so far, but it still needs to be refined before we enter production.

Persuasive and Serious Games

I’ve heard Persuasive and Serious Games being referred to as the most academic game design related course that is offered by ITU. So far, they don’t seem to be wrong. Taught by Rilla Khaled, herself an inspiring lecturer, the course discusses ethics in games, persuasion in games, games for learning, games for health, gamification and other interesting concepts. There’s a lot of literature to read, and we also have to make a persuasive game. My team is developing a game that discusses piracy, but the concept also still needs to be refined.

Intelligent Systems Programming

Before the second semester started, I asked around to see whether or not it would be more intense than the first semester. In particular, I asked about Intelligent Systems Programming. Friends of mine who had already taken the course stated that it was quite challenging; some even mentioned a 60% fail rate. By the looks of it so far, they don’t seem to be wrong.

The material so far is really interesting, as we’ve discussed heuristic searches so far (such as depth-limited search, iterative deepening search, best first search, A* and others), as well as adversarial searches (such as minimax and alpha-beta pruning). The course is, however, heavily based in maths and logic, and makes a lot of reference to set theory and graph theory. We are also expected to work out exercises for every week, as well as work on small group projects throughout the year.

Game Spaces

Kunal Gupta from Babycastles

With that out of the way, I’d like to discuss Kunal Gupta’s thoughts yesterday and its relevance to where I’m from, the island of Malta. Babycastles is more of a movement, an indie collective, a performance space, an independent arcade, but don’t expect to find games like Street Fighter or Mortal Combat there! It’s a space for independent game developers and designers to show off experimental work and thus, constantly redefining what games mean. If you want to learn more about what it is, this article might help.

Kunal’s main argument, and one that hit home, was that by having this space allowed game developers to meet up, making the indie scene in New York stronger. With the knowledge that Malta wants to get something started in games, I think that something like Babycastles is missing, and will be well received too. By piggybacking onto the local music scene (again, similar to what Babycastles did), I believe that we can manage to group the local game developer community together, as well as get other people interested. One particular example was the Memento Mori exhibition by Scaremongering, which I think worked really well in fusing the art scene and music scene in Malta together.

If a person were to come up to me and ask me my opinion on the best places to find an indie games community, 3 cities immediately spring to mind: Copenhagen, New York and Utrecht. The fact that there is an academic presence (in the form of a Masters course) in each of those cities adds to the fact that there is a strong, vibrant community that is able to share ideas with individuals. I believe that Malta can contain something similar. Games development in Malta, although slowly progressing, is still in its infancy, and there is a lot of work to be done before it is accepted locally as an art form. To my knowledge, some courses are being offered at the University of Malta in games development, and a small group of people called the Digital Games Production: Malta organizes talks and events such as the Gamezing competition.

At the moment, the emphasis in Malta seems to be on digital games. My personal opinion is that we should go beyond that and enter the space of folk games, analog games, role playing games and performance games, leveraging the small communities of performance artists, board game players and card game players. Doug’s quick session of Hokra, a digital sports game, and J. S. Joust, a performance game set to music tempo, proves that these type of games are interesting both to play and to watch, and I have not come across any similar games from Malta.

By having something similar to Babycastles in Malta, and with the help of the local art scene and music scene, I think that we might be able to form a local indie games scene and get something going!

But before the actual Nordic Game Jam itself, it’s important to mention the SpilBar and the Pre-Party which occurred on the 26th of January. SpilBar 8 featured the favourite gaming moments of several people involved in games, such as several people from Danish indie companies, as well as the Dutch indie company Vlambeer.

Friday, 27th of January was the official day of the Nordic Game Jam, and it started out with several talks from both professional developers as well as indie developers. There were a total of 11 talks, where 6 of them were in the Main track, and the rest were in the Indie track. The talks from both tracks occurred at the same time however, so I had to jump around from one track to another in order to get the most out of the speakers’ talks. There were some interesting topics raised, such as the ability to work around constraints when making games, rapid game development in Unity, as well as the concept of intellectual property in games.

Eventually, it was time to form groups and get to work to make games. I decided to make a board game, so I headed down to the DesignLab and eventually ended up in a team of around 10 people, all of them pitching ideas that they encountered from the group forming process. Eventually, one of the group brought over a board game from the resource pile that contained hexagonal tiles, and these were quickly used  as our constraint to make a game. We then split up into two smaller groups when it became fairly clear which people wanted to work with which ideas.

The idea we formed around was one where there could only be 3 hexagonal tiles in play, and once one was placed, another was removed. We quickly jumped to the idea of having smaller hexagonal tiles inside the large hexagonal tile, and after some discussions, the game slowly started taking shape.

An early prototype of our game

Above, you can see the first prototype of our game, where players had to draw cards and move their characters through hexagonal grid. Dice were used to hold the paper prototype down, since it was small and fiddly. After going through several iterations of our cards, and realizing what worked and what didn’t, we realized that our room tiles were too small to be usable and too unwieldy to comfortably playtest, so we created larger versions of the room tiles. We also found better pieces that could reliably represent players in the game.

The second prototype of our game.

The second prototype also allowed us to avoid half-hexagonal tiles, since we cut those out. This allowed us to  connect the rooms in various interesting ways. However, playtesting showed that the first player was being removed from the game fairly quickly, but the rest of the game dragged on indefinitely. The longest play session we encountered so far was at 45 minutes! We realized that due to feature creep, we needed to rethink the cards as well as the movement system. By allowing cards to double both as movement cards and as special action cards,  games started to become much quicker. Another feature we added was the idea that the game would end when the 7th tile was picked up, which we dubbed the final tile. This would stop players from going through the same tiles and thus go on forever. We also realized that once a player was out of the game, he did not have any interaction with the rest of the players still in the game. To counter this, we added what we called Guilty Conscience cards. These cards allow players that have left the game to have an influence on the players that are still in the game.

The third prototype of our game.

We eventually settled on an Arabian theme for the game and explained to players that they were a group of bandits that were running through the palace to escape after a foiled robbery of the Caliph’s palace. The artwork of the game was therefore Arabian inspired, as can be seen in the picture above. This eventually led to us deciding on the name Mussades as the name of our submission, as well as Sugarush as the name of our team, since we were operating on very little sleep.

After a long Saturday night, where I slept for 1 hour in an auditorium (usually used to give lectures), and 2 hours on a sofa in ITU’s DesignLab, we had the rest of Sunday morning to polish up our third prototype as well as hastily create and submit a trailer for the game before the deadline, as required for the Global Game Jam submissions.

The contestants were split up into 3 different auditoriums and had to give presentations of the games they had created over the course of the Nordic Game Jam. 3 different games were voted as the best from the audience each auditorium, as well as 1 game selected by the jury, meaning that 12 games were chosen as finalists. These were:

• AAAAAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!! – Tim (Youtube link) (New Gameplay video)
• Boing Wauw (Youtube link)
• Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
• Eskil’s Adventure – [Placeholder] Studios (Youtube link)
• Infinite Swat – Infinite SWAG (Youtube link)
• Mein Panzer – Robocat (Youtube link)
• Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
• Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
• Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
• Spläsh Dämäge - Team Mothership  (Youtube link)
• Switch Naga Go! – Adorable Nagablob (Youtube link)
• Who Took The Apple – Laus Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Eventually, the award ceremony began, where the team behind each game had to first give a presentation in front of all 300 of the participants. The first awards to be given out were the awards for the separately running board game competition:

1. Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
2. Blue Print – Hexagonians (Youtube link)
3. Ring the Gong – The Brotherhood – Part1, Part2 (Youtube link)
4. Who Took The Apple – Lau’s Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

The winner of the Nordic Food game competition was also presented:

• Jumping Suzy (YouTube link)

After that, the jury (made up of 4 different people) chose one game each as their favourite, as well as giving an explanation of why they had chosen that particular game. These games were:

• David McCarthy from GREE: Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
• Jeppe Carlsen from Playdead: Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
• Manveer Heir from Bioware: Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
• Ole Teglbjærg from Press Play: Boing Wow (Youtube link)

And finally, we progressed to the Audience’s Choice awards, where the audience could vote for their favourite game from the finalists presented. These were:

1. Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
2. Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
3. Who Took The Apple – Lau’s Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Sugarush, the team that created Mussades during the Nordic Game Jam 2012

All in all, I felt that attending the Nordic Game Jam was a fantastic experience, and any budding games designer or developer should consider attending a similar game jam, as you get the chance to meet new people, as well as work in completely different environments.

(Thanks to Anders Lystad Brevik for the run-down of all the winners in the awards ceremony.)

Among all the parties and celebrations that inevitably occur along the way during the semester, there were some interesting and exciting events that occured, as well as lots of work to do.

Game Design

As well as all the reading we had to do for Games Design, we also had to form groups and work on a small game. Although I had the initial idea of leading my own team, I quickly scrapped that idea since there was another team that was lacking programmers, and I joined them.

This meant that I had the opportunity to work with Thomas and others to work on Sun Valve, a narrative game where you play the role of a lighthouse keeper living on an island. I was the lead programmer on the team and I worked with the Unreal Development Kit, using several languages at once.

On top of that, us Games Technology students also had to write a review for Jesper Juul’s book Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, with references to the literature we discussed in class. (This may be found in the Academic Writing section of my website if you are interested in reading it.)

Something else that I had to get used to is the fact that the examinations here are mainly oral exams. In the case of Games design, I had 2 oral exams, where the first one was a 5 minute oral exam where I was asked a question about one of the many academic papers we read over the course. The second oral exam was a 1 minute presentation of yourself and your role in the development of the group game.

Game Engines

This course involved getting together as a group of 5 people (which later dropped to 4) and programming a game engine together in C++ and OpenGL. We decided to create a 3D platformer game engine, in the style of Crash Bandicoot or Spyro, and the oral exam involved 20 minutes of preparation where one could gather one’s thoughts about the questions presented to him, and then another 20 minutes explaining the chosen question, as well as answering questions about the game engine and your role in development.

Demo Night at PROSA, and other events

Something I love about living in Copenhagen as a student games designer and development is the fact that there is a very vibrant indie scene here (whereas Malta’s game development scene is non-existent, let alone its indie scene). Thanks to the Special Interest Group meetings held by the Danish chapter of IGDA, as well as the extra-curricular Game Lectures held by the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University, students like myself are able to get a glimpse on the inner workings of the local games industry, as well as consider interesting topics that are connected to games, however loosely. Such topics include sound design in games, the portrayal of avatars in games and other media, as well as algorithms used in Korean robots.

One particular example is the Indie Demo Night held at PROSA. The intention of this event is to get indie developers together in order to network, as well as to show off current works-in-progress.

Another event that has occurred here that is of interest to game developers is SpilBar. This consists of short talks by developers (both indie and established) who talk about their experiences when releasing games, among other topics. There is also time allocates to ask questions, as well as the opportunity to mingle with the rest of the attendees.

Other events include the game jams. The biggest game jam in Copenhagen is undoubtedly the Nordic Game Jam, but there are other, smaller jams such as the Exile Game Jam which takes place at the Vallekilde Højskole in Hørve. Developers are also encouraged to take part in small, global jams; examples include the 0-hour game jam, as well as the Stop SOPA game jam.

Living in Denmark

One thing I’ve noticed is that unless you have a CPR number, you won’t be able to open a bank account and get a mobile phone number, amongst other things. (I know that Lebara allow you to obtain a Danish mobile phone number for quite a low price, but due to mixed reviews from my friends, I didn’t consider them.)

My experience with obtaining this number is that it is a lengthy process, partly due to the fact that September is particularly busy due to all the new students that arrive in Copenhagen. Before applying for a CPR number however, one must first obtain a residence permit. This took around a week for me. The CPR number took around 2 weeks to arrive for me, but on arrival, I noticed that they had made a mistake with my birthdate, rendering the number invalid, and so had to wait another 2 weeks for them to correct it. It finally arrived however, and I could go about applying for a Danish mobile number and a Danish bank account. Online only mobile providers (such as Oister), help keep expenses down, and I consulted with my home bank to see which bank they recommended I deal with while in Denmark.

Looking at the timetable, and coming from a background where I had loads of lectures at the University, you wouldn’t have thought that it could possibly get this busy. Just 20 hours of lectures a week, that doesn’t sound too bad.

Game Design however, thought otherwise. Apart from assignments that are given every lecture (usually for the next corresponding lecture), we also had to prepare reading as a background to the following lecture. And don’t think that the reading consisted of reviews for upcoming games, oh no. Engaging academic papers, sometimes naming loads of philosophers, psychologists and sociologists that all discussed games from an academic perspective, as well as several books. The average is around 3 papers and a book chapter for the following lecture, and the content isn’t an easy read either.

Game Engines is also not the easiest of courses. Most of the lectures consist of how different components of an actual game engine work, going through several historical algorithms and explaining their shortcomings. However, we also have to program an actual 3D game engine using C++ and OpenGL.

Although there’s a massive workload to be covered, that doesn’t stop students from enjoying the facilities present at the University. After hearing about an arcade machine that stopped working in ScrollBar, and a ping pong table that mysteriously broke down, a group of 3 students decided to have a go at bringing them back.

I teamed up with Jonathan and Tommy as we came up with new ideas as to how we could bring back the arcade machine, with a twist of course. Then it hit us, why not introduce the Winntron to ITU? If the university emphasized indie games so much, then why wasn’t it a part of this untapped indie game network?

Testing out the arcade controls

Our exploits in building the Winnitron for ITU are detailed in a separate blog.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get back to my reading!

Foam Dice

This week was the introduction week at the IT University of Copenhagen. I was a little nervous, since not only was it a new experience and a new setting in a completely different country, but also because I knew absolutely no-one.

Tuesday was an introductory day dedicated to all international students. Although I didn’t know anybody, I felt that it was easy to just sit down and talk to people. After an introduction to studying in Denmark and the way the system is organized, we were taken by boat to Nyhavn, and then walked to a restaurant in the Kongens Nytorv area, where we had dinner generously paid for by the university. Here, I spent the rest of the evening talking to 3 Italians, a Spaniard, several Romanians, and an Icelandic girl. I also met a German guy who I had been speaking to, since we had been trying to look for an apartment together, and I met a Belgian guy whose blog I had also been following.

Wednesday was the official start to Introduction Days, as it also included the Danish students who were starting their studies at the university. After a talk by the Study Advisory, and an interesting talk by the vice-chancellor, the Games students were officially welcomed to their course. We were introduced to the facilities that the university had to offer (and I was particularly impressed with the fact that it was open 24/7 if you had a student card, unlike the University of Malta, where campus life died after 6), and we were also introduced to the different student organizations that were available.

We also had our first ice-breaker, where we were divided into groups and after talking a bit about ourselves, each person had to present another person in the group to the rest of the class.

We were then introduced to our introductory project. Basically, we were divided into fresh groups and each group given a random object, and the aim was to create an analog game with the object given as a core concept in the game.

Our group (consisting of 3 Danes, a German, a Pole and myself) were given 6 large foam dice, where each die had a different colour. We didn’t want to use the dice in a standard way by rolling them, and in fact cycled through various different game ideas, from a memory game, to a elemental battle system, to a strange 3D snake game, until on Friday, we finally settled on a “race-to-the-finish” idea using the dice as player representations. We named our game Dice Dash.

Dice Dash - Work in progress

On Thursday, we were formally introduced to the Games programming by Miguel Sicart, the head of the games programme. He explained each tracks in detail and what we were meant to expect out of them, as well as the possible jobs we could expect to obtain in the future. I found his talk very motivational and inspiring, and I can’t wait to officially start lectures with him, since he teaches Game Design.

Finally, on Friday, we had to present our completed introduction project, along with the rest of the groups. Below, you can see 11 of the 12 groups who presented their games, and the names of their games.

The other groups

The results were voted on by having the groups decide on their favourite, second favourite and third favourite games, with 3, 2 and 1 point given for each respective choice. Groups could not vote for themselves (obviously). Below, you can see the results.

Group Points

We won! It was great working with you all, Carsten, Casper, Ulrik, Alex and Joanna, and I hope I get the opportunity to work with you again in future projects!

Here’s my story of how I, as a Masters student, found lodging in Copenhagen. Your mileage may vary, of course.

As soon as I got my acceptance letter from the IT University of Copenhagen, I instantly decided to start looking for lodging, since I had heard how difficult it is to find.

Initially, I browsed Craigslist in the hopes of finding a suitable apartment or a room that could be rented. However, the only replies I got back were scams (usually from a Nigerian missionary who could not show me the apartment, but was willing to send me the keys to a very cheap flat in the city centre, if only I could send him some money as a deposit to prove that I was not wasting his time). I was later informed that the Danes do not usually use Craigslist anyway.

I then registered at the KKIK, who assign dorm rooms to students. The waiting lists were extremely high though (from 2000 to around 4000), so I left a few applications while continuing to look elsewhere.

I signed up to two sites (boligportal.dk and boligbasen.dk) that were recommended to me as being helpful for me to find a place to stay in Copenhagen. However, to access the complete listings, I needed to pay an amount of money (365DKK and 599DKK respectively). In hindsight, boligbasen.dk was definitely not worth it, and I’ve also heard several complaints from people about it.

I also signed up to findroomate.dk, which assured me that I was able to find a room-mate to stay with while in Copenhagen. However, I also had to pay an amount to be able to send messages to people. Ultimately, nobody ever answered my queries, so I don’t think it was worth it.

I looked around at dba.dk, which I was told was a site commonly used by Danes to buy and sell stuff. I only got one answer from it, which never materialized anything.

Ultimately, the main problem I found while trying to search for lodging is the fact that nobody seemed to answer any of my queries and emails. I would only get an answer a week later, telling me that the apartment had been rented. This made my experience very frustrating.

My girlfriend approached me with an apartment which seemed realistic enough, since communication was from a person who appeared to be a student. However, the more the person spoke to us, asking us to fill in forms and more detail, we became suspicious and I suspected some form of identity theft. The identity card she provided us with had expired (and to make matters worse, the format on the card was no longer used). Therefore, we quickly abandoned that apartment and reported the person to the relevant authorities.

On the 8th of August, I arrived in Copenhagen with my girlfriend and checked in to the Generator Hostel, located very near to Kongens Nytorv. I was determined to make the most of my time there and try to find a place to stay. After looking through the classifieds in the Copenhagen Post (a local newspaper written in English), I managed to find a room to rent in Brønshøj, where the landlord actually answered my e-mails. I did not feel comfortable in the area though, and was even more worried to see an apartment catch fire when we arrived.

Meanwhile, some other international students who would be studying at the University were also having problems trying to find lodging. We decided to find an apartment to rent out between 2 people by using the Danish Homes agency. We found ourselves an apartment in København SV, and after I viewed the apartment, we were asked to send in some information so that the owner would be able to decide who to rent out the apartment too. This however, was only available from the 1st of September, and so I still had the problem of finding lodging for the rest of August.

My time at the hostel was up, so we decided to move from Generator Hostel to Cabinn Metro, a small hotel in Amager very close to the IT University. Our stay was for the weekend. However, we received a message on Saturday afternoon telling us that the apartment we had found through the agency had been rented out successfully, leaving us with nothing again.

It was here that I began to panic, since I was effectively homeless and hadn’t found a place to stay yet. I sent several emails to people that I believed would be able to help (such as the Jesuits in Denmark), but no such luck. Finally, my girlfriend messaged a guy who happened to be the friend of her cousin, and he was willing to provide us with temporary lodging, as well as try to find people who were interested in renting out their room. In the mean time, I continued to send emails to interesting apartments on the websites mentioned about, switching the written language from English to Danish (assuming that I would have the upper hand).

Eventually, I did manage to find a room to rent in Vanløse and I moved in 2 days ago to settle down and finally get ready to start my Masters degree.

Some helpful advice: When looking for a place to stay in Copenhagen, do not just look for lodging inside the city centre! Look also for lodging just outside it, such as in Vanløse, Valby and other similar areas.

Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving for Copenhagen in order to prepare for my Masters in Media Technology and Games at the IT University of Copenhagen. The course officially starts on the 29th of August, but I decided to arrive a little earlier in order to settle lodging.

Lodging was one of my main concerns during the summer. When they said it was very difficult to find proper accommodation in Copenhagen, they weren’t lying. Out of the e-mails I sent, nobody ever answered me. I only heard from them some two weeks later to inform me that the place had successfully been rented out. I’m hoping that if I’m physically in Copenhagen, I should stand a better chance at finding suitable lodging.

I still feel a little queasy and anxious, since this is something totally new for me, but at the same time, I can’t wait!

ITU Copenhagen acceptance envelope

I’ve just been accepted for a Masters degree in Media Technology in Games at ITU Copenhagen, Denmark!

The deadline for the application was the 1st of April, 2011, while the acceptance letter was posted from Denmark on the 31st of May, 2011. It arrived in Malta on the 3rd of June, 2011 (quite quick, I must say). The university had informed potential candidates that they should expect to receive an answer by the 15th of June, 2011.

In particular, I chose the Technology stream, which allows me to learn more about the more technical areas of games, such as game engines and AI. I’m also interested in topics such as procedural content generation and games design.

Now it looks like I need to search for suitable housing in order to spend the next two years in Copenhagen! Craigslist is unfortunately full of scams. If you use Google Translate, you might be able to find a good deal at some of the Danish rental sites. In my case, by sending in an accommodation application before the 1st of June, ITU Copenhagen will try help find suitable accommodation.

Also, I found sites such as thegradcafe.com useful in finding out whether other people have been accepted.

All in all, the IT University of Copenhagen looks like a great place to study, and I currently want August to arrive as soon as possible!