Orono - Losing yourself in a game has been a favorite pastime of many for years. Some University of Maine students worked in teams to bring their own original computer games to life.

“It’s really challenging your intellectual ability and your logical capabilities to create something from nothing,” said Kelsie York.

Their pixilated adventures are part of a game-writing expo.

“You get to showcase your games for other people and you get to try other people’s games,” said Patrick Meunier.

It’s part of Professor Markowsky’s computer programming class.

“We try to get them to take a professional interest in it and I think that when they all participate, they kind of feel the competitive juices,” said Markowsky.

Competitive, because the games are also being voted on.

“It’s a nice friendly competition. We encourage them to go look at the work that other students do and it kind of raises the bar for everybody,” said Markowsky.

Giving them the freedom to do just about anything.

“We made it a little more interesting by making it go faster the more and more the game goes on. So, it gets really competitive the more you play and we have a lot of fun doing it and a lot of fun making it,” said Mitchell Roberge.

It’s a hands-on approach students will benefit from in the future.

“It’s really great, especially since I want to be a part of this when I get out of college, I either want to be an indie game maker, or work for perhaps a company,” said Cameron Morrison.

“It was definitely a great challenge since this is my first program course, but we definitely learned a lot in CS 125 and I’m very happy with the outcome of the game,” said Maxwell Morin.

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