The most interesting student games from Copenhagen Gaming Week
We visited a strange PS1-cult, cleaned a haunted castle, and helped a detective solve a murder by haunting objects.
As a student you have a lot on your plate. So, when you have to develop a video game in just a few months - with no budget and little experience to speak of - it might seem like an insurmountable task. Nevertheless, that's exactly what many of the attendees at the TAGS (Tomorrow's Awesome Games Showcase) 2025 had managed to achieve.
The showcase was part of Copenhagen Gaming Week, and student developers from some of Denmark's gaming and animation degree programmes had a unique chance to build hype and get invaluable feedback from players of all ages.
The level was surprisingly high, and in this article we take a closer look at three of the most interesting games that managed to catch our attention with fun gameplay, new concepts, and some rather unique stylistic choices.
Duster Buster
Duster Buster is a simple and charming rogue-lite about a cleaner, tasked with cleaning an old, decrepit castle. This might sound like a hard job in and of itself, but as the furniture is not only covered in dust, but also haunted by poltergeists, you'll face quite a challenge. "Duster Buster is inspired by games like Hades and The Binding of Isaac. It has been developed during the first semester of our master's degree at ITU [IT University of Copenhagen], and we've created a simple demo with 10 levels," explains level and sound designer Sjúrður Eyðunsson Samuelsen.
The game uses pixelated graphics and a top-down perspective. Our courageous cleaner has two kinds of attacks: a quick jab and a slower, but more powerful attack where he spins his mop creating a vortex. This might not sound like much, but you never feel weak as the cleaner moves faster and rolls longer than any Olympic gymnast. Each time you have mopped up a room, you can select one of two upgrades. Some of these provide you with a damage or health boost, while others change things up in a big way, such as an upgrade that disables your normal attacks, but makes your dodge roll deal damage.
We've learned that actually our core audience is children. They really enjoy the game.
Samuelsen explains that making the combat system intuitive have been one of the major challenges. "First our attacks were too slow. Later our testers had problems with figuring out the upgrades." Now though, the controls feel very precise, and that's definitely needed, as the enemies are both hard and varied, even though there are only three kinds. The lamps try to electrocute you with an area attack, the sofas both bite and chase you, while the dust balls attack you in numbers - luckily they can be killed by a single swipe.
The study group will continue to work on Duster Buster during their current semester, but what will happen afterwards is still up in the air, Samuelsen reveals. At least Copenhagen Gaming Week has provided them with more motivation to develop the concept further, as the showcase ended up demonstrating that the game indeed has an audience - though it wasn't quite the one they've expected. "At ITU, we've only tested the game among other adults. Now we've learned that actually our core audience is children. They really enjoy the game. It has definitely been a good experience to show it off."
You can read more about Duster Buster on itch.io. Here you can also try the demo for yourself, either directly through your browser or by downloading it.
Welcome Home
Playing games at conventions such as Gamescom or, in this instance, Copenhagen Gaming Week can sometimes be a bit stressful. You are often thrown right into the game without any sort of tutorial, and even if you manage to figure the game out, the noise from the crowd and surrounding booths will typically ruin the immersion. It says a lot about Welcome Home then, that it despite this still managed to draw me into it's weird and disturbing universe.
The game open with you receiving a letter from your friend Astrid. She writes that she would love for you to visit her in her happy community of "peace-love-and-harmony-loving hippie Christians." Soon afterwards you find yourself on a remote Scandinavian farm, where you are met by disturbingly wide smiles and barred windows. The mere worry soon turns deadly, and what begins as a quiet walking simulator towards the end becomes more of a running-and-hiding simulator. "It has a Midsommar-kind of vibe. It's highly inspired by that movie, as well as games like Nun Massacre, explain Simon Alaunė who as game design lead is responsible for the game's unique premise and eye-catching visual style.
With its noticeable compression artifacts, moody lighting, and raw, jagged textures, Welcome Home immediately catches the eye. Despite being only student project the game has already gone viral, Alaunė tells us. "The game has been a massive success on social media, especially on itch.io where it has currently reached over 25,000 downloads and 80,000 views. It has also been picked up by one of the most well-known Twitch streamers Case_oh, and his video on our game received over 1.2 million views."
Other popular YouTubers such as Manly BadassHero and Alpha Beta Gamer have also covered the game, and it has even managed to gain some traction in China thanks to a friend of the developer. But what is it exactly that makes these kinds of retro-inspired games so popular? The main reason is probably nostalgia. Where the last generation of indie developers grew up with pixel art and 2D games, many newer game creators (as well as consumers) have been formed by the raw and often trippy three-dimensional landscapes of the late 90s and early 00s.
"The main reason I choose this particular style is that I'm a huge fan of the PlayStation 2. I've been playing PlayStation 2 games since I was a small child," explains Alaunė. "The second reason is that these days there is a huge trend, especially in the indie sphere of PlayStation 1 aesthetics, and of course the visuals and the aesthetics are also easy to make compared to something more realistic."
The fact that horror games in particular have made effective use of retro-inspired 3D graphics is probably no coincidence either, as there is something almost uncanny about the crude textures. The game's title Welcome Home is thus fitting. The almost manic smile that greets you in the beginning of the game reminds you of happier days playing Crash Bandicoot and Harry Potter on the original PlayStation, but at the same time, something is clearly not quite how you remembered it. In short, Welcome Home is both familiar and frightening, and I think this is the main reason for its particular appeal.
Just as with the previously mentioned Duster Buster, Welcome Home was developed in just seven weeks, a process that was aided by all the developers being familiar with programming in advance - something that is not always the case. Unfortunately, Stalker Studio will not continue the development of Welcome Home for much longer, Alaunė reveals. "We are still fixing some bugs and adding some pieces to the game, just to fully perfect it. And then afterwards we are going to release it, which is going to be in a couple of weeks, I presume. We are sadly going to put the project away afterwards, as we are going in new ways, we have new classes, new group exams and so on. We all agree that the game has reached its peak and we just want to leave it at that."
Welcome Home can be downloaded at itch.io and wishlisted on Steam.
The Walls Have Eyes
While the two first games were developed by first-year students at the ITU master's degree programme in Games, our final game, The Walls Have Eyes, comes from a team of four women who have just finished their final exams at the The Animation Workshop in the city of Viborg. Vølven Studio they are called, their company has been tax-registered, the concept is in place, and the first prototype is fully playable. That being said, they are still missing one final piece of the puzzle. "Right now, we are trying to find a software developer or programmer for our game. We are primarily artists, so we need some help on the technical side," explains game director Anne-Dorthe Hansen.
Even without a dedicated programmer, Vølven Studio has managed to create a playable concept demo. It has been built through the visual programming interface Blueprint in Unreal Engine, and while it still lacks some polishing, the demo was finished in time for the visitors at Copenhagen Gaming Week to try out a murder mystery with a twist.
In The Walls Have Eyes you play as a ghost suffering from amnesia that wakes up in an upper-class home moments before a detective arrives on the scene. By assisting the detective with his investigation, you can unravel the terrible things that have happened in the seemingly idyllic upper-class home, and maybe even find the key to your own identity. To solve the game's puzzles, you need to haunt various objects and draw the detective's attention to important clues. There isn't much gameplay yet, but what there is reminds us a bit of Capcom's DS classic Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.
"Our message is very much about mental health."
The game is set in 1884 and although neither the year nor the decade has the same significance for Danes as, say, 1864 (The Schleswig War) or 1941 (the occupation by Nazi Germany), both the time and place have been chosen for a reason, explains the game director. "We think it's a very interesting period in Danish history. It is before World War 1, the great wars, and it's sort of a golden age, a very harmonic period. A lot is going on with the women's movement, and the universities start opening their doors to people from different strata of society. It is generally a quite progressive period."
For their showcase at Copenhagen Gaming Week, the developers have brought a stapled folder filled with drawings and concept art of grandfather clocks, porcelain polar bears, and other stables of a stylish Danish homes of the 1880s. The illustrations display a real attention to detail, and Hansen explains that it has required plenty of research, both in digital archives and dusty old books, to nail the correct style.
"In the beginning we step into a beautiful home from this period that almost seems as if it is right out of a fairytale. As you start to learn more about what has taking place, the exterior starts to fall apart. We have wanted to show, that while you can smile and keep up appearances on the outside, things will eventually collapse," explains Hansen before giving us the rundown of the game's theme.
"Our message is very much about mental health. It's a topic that is widely discussed at the moment. How do we make sure that young people are thriving? How should we take care of ourselves on the job market. A rhetoric of everything being better in the good old days often emerges, also in regard to mental health. But I don't think that's the case. I just think that people were less open and better at hiding things back then."
The Walls Have Eyes is still a long way from release. The next step is creating a more comprehensive demo, and hopefully securing both investments and a publisher. If this pans out, Vølven Studio hopes to be able to complete the project in about two years.
