Oregon Game Project Challenge is a yearly contest for middle school and high school students to design and build their own video games.  Produced by the TechStart Educational Foundation, this year’s theme is “Urban Planning” in which student programmers and designers are invited to create a game about the bursting-at-the-seams mythical country of Oregonia (they didn’t have early urban planning).

Here is a run-down of last year’s Game Challenge on Get Real centered around the theme of disaster response and recovery.

This year, two “Game Jams” in March will help jump-start the design process.  The teams will ultimately present their games at the OGPC Main Event in Salem on April 28.

Important dates:

• March 3, 2012  Mentor Training, Willamette University
• March 10, 2012 Game Jam Portland Metro
• March 17,2012  Game Jam Eugene, OR
• April 28, 2012 Main Event, Chemeketa Community College

Lots of resources are available on the OGPC blog from free programming tools to ideas to get you started.

OGPC – Participate in OGPC.