By Linda Barney, Barney and Associates
The Oregon Game Project Challenge (OGPC) is a video game development competition for middle school and high school students. OGPC uses student interest in making games to develop a wide variety of skills. “Our OGPC mission is to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) and contribute to building a strong technical workforce by running a competition for students to design and create video games,” states Shannon Ernst, OGPC Executive Director. Students write code, create art and music, craft a story and design gameplay. They learn project management and teamwork as they collaborate over multiple months to deliver a project. And they practice their soft skills as they present their project to judges and other students.
OGPC 2025-2026 Season 19 – Journeys Challenge
The annual OGPC Season 19 Challenge was held May 2, 2026, at Western University in Monmouth, Oregon. The theme for this season was Journeys and teams built a video game that explored various types of journeys such as human treks, journeys of animals and fish, plants, natural elements, dragon flights, alien invasions and other inventive journey ideas. Teams were judged on their interpretation and attempt to represent the theme in all parts of a submission including gameplay, story, art, and sound design.
Participating Teams in the Challenge
A big congratulations to all teams who competed in the Season 19 OGPC Challenge. There were forty teams competing in the May 2 challenge including 36 high school and 6 middle school teams. Click here to see the Season 19 winning entries and have a chance to play the games.
Game Example Wander
The game example above was the game entry from the Kerfuhncler-Cats team from Marshfield Jr. High School. In this game, a cat named Soy living in the desert is being hunted and the game has various actions the cat might make. As part of the game, students determine the game's core gameplay loop, such as the main game mechanics, goals, challenges, and rewards that the player will experience. The data structures, code, algorithms, game logo, and music or sounds were also defined by the student team. In addition, each team created documentation about their game as well as identifying any logic bugs encountered and how they fixed the issue. Click this link to play the game: https://junilouu.itch.io/wanderkerfuhnclercatsor.
TechStart is Proud To Be Involved as OGPC Volunteers
TechStart powers K-12 computer science education in Oregon. TechStart provides Teacher of the Year annual awards to K-12 computer science teachers who are awarded $1,000 to use for tech education materials to spend in their classrooms on hardware, software, services, or curriculum. TechStart provides Student of the Year awards to two high school juniors or seniors.
“It has been my pleasure to be a judge at OGPC since its inception nineteen years ago. I can say it’s a great event and provides many benefits to the students who participate. If you know students who like to play or develop video games, urge them to check out the OGPC.info website,” states John Tortorici, TechStart Board Chair. To volunteer for TechStart, see the Contact page or click here to donate to TechStart.