Kontrolerji: Make a Walking Sim Game

DATE: from 13 April to 30 May 2026 (7 3-hour workshop sessions and a public presentation)
LOCATION: TBA
MENTORS: Nathalie Lawhead, Brin Žvan

APPLICATIONS:
The workshop is free of charge and suitable for complete beginners with no experience in coding. To join, you must apply in advance using the application form. The applications are now closed. The number of places is limited. In case of receiving more applications than we can accommodate, the selection will be curated. We will prioritise FLINTA* applicants. The workshop will be held in English. Bring your laptop.

Kontrolerji are back! This year, the computer games creation series will be dedicated to the genre of walking simulators with an embedded Unreal Engine crash-course. During the workshops, you will create your own walking simulator game. Walk, talk, interact with objects and create an atmosphere! The game will be presented at the Adela festival in May and Slovenia Games conference in October. The workshop sessions will be co-mentored by renowned game designer and internet artist Nathalie Lawhead (creator of the multi-award-winning game *Everything is Going to Be OK*) and the series coordinator, media artist and game designer Brin Žvan (creator of the multi-award-winning game ONE BTN BOSSES).

Workshop course

The course will encompass a few days of tutorials and a few days of coworking. The course is designed so that during longer breaks between the workshop days you can work on the game on your own.

Monday, 13 April 2026 from 6pm to 9 pm
DAY 1: Paper prototyping

Creating a paper using post-it notes and other tangible objects to make a prototype that can be recreated in a game engine. We’re thinking about a character or autonomous object moving around a world and what can inhabit that world.

Wednesday, 15 April and Thursday, 16 April from 6pm to 9pm
DAYS 2 and 3: Starting in Unreal

Setting up Unreal and introduction to the UI, where what is, what does what on a basic level. Creating the initial map and discussing atmosphere (lighting and sky). Adding the player, player start, running the game, and how to do the initial setup. Walk and talk.

Wednesday, 22 April and Thursday, 23 April from 6pm to 9pm
DAYS 4 and 5: Unreal crash-course

Building a blockout with simple geometry (cubes, spheres, and planes) that's included in Unreal. Discussing simple collisions. Discussing materials, material instances, material types, textures, and shaders. Basic visual coding via blueprints. Building on the blockout with imported geometry. Custom 3D models, and importing them. Open source mesh libraries like thebasemesh, PBR libraries, and free assets on Fab. Overview of the folder structure of your project. Events, trigger boxes, and more blueprints.

Wednesday, 6 May from 6pm to 9pm
DAY 6: Coworking

Need motivation to work on the game, or help figuring out why the colliders don't work? Don’t worry, we’re here to keep you company and to google answers with you.

Wednesday, 20 May from 6pm to 9pm
DAY 7: Finishing up

It’s time for finishing touches and getting the game ready to be released on itch.io

Saturday, 30 May from 4pm to 8pm
PLAYTEST at ADELA

We will set up a booth at Adela Festival in Kino Šiška where we will invite friends, festivalgoers and passers-by to try our walking sim games.

About the mentors

Nathalie Lawhead (1983) is an award-winning internet artist, software creator, and game designer. Their work is included in numerous collections, including Rhyzome ArtBase and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. They create at the controversial intersection of video games and art, challenging the way we live and work in our digital era with their experimental works. They publish their games (Everything is Going to be OK, Tetrageddon Games, Blue Suburbia, etc.) under the pseudonym AlienMelon on the itch.io platform.

Brin Žvan (1998) is a media artist and game designer. With an MA in Game Design from the IT University of Copenhagen (2023), they create games that use either too many or too few buttons. Their latest work is the game ONE BTN BOSSES (2024), in which the player battles her bosses with just one button. The game has been awarded multiple times and has been extremely well received by critics, boasting a score of 87/100 on Metacritic. Before that, they created Presenter Slides (2022), a bureaucratic adventure that received a nomination for the Best Student Game at the Independent Games Festival (2023, San Francisco). When Brin is not making games, they teach others how to. And when not teaching, they take care of plants or cook with friends.

Workshops in 2025

Nathalie Lawhead: altgames

DATE:
Wednesday, 26 November 2025 | 18:00–19:30

LOCATION:
Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, Auditorium (Cankarjeva 15, Ljubljana)

At this year's final event in the series Controllers, we will be joined by Nathalie Lawhead, aka AlienMelon, author of the cult game Everything is Going to be OK!

In her lecture at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, Nathalie will share her thoughts on the concept of altgames – experimental games that have grown from a marginal label into a movement, a community, and a way of thinking about games as art.

Video games are more than just big AAA titles. There is a world of independent developers who explore games as an art form – in the past, such practices were referred to as arthouse, a movement of which Nathalie Lawhead was also a part. In this lecture, they will share their experiences, talk about their beginnings in video game creation, and present their view of artistic games and the arthouse label. In the altgames (beyond the norm) lecture, they also explore how developers today are raising social issues, breaking the norms, and influencing the wider gaming community, while contributing to positive changes in society. The lecture will be held in English.

Nathalie Lawhead (1983) is an award-winning internet artist, software creator, and game designer. Their work is included in numerous collections, including Rhyzome ArtBase and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. They create at the controversial intersection of video games and art, challenging the way we live and work in our digital era with their experimental works. They publish their games (Everything is Going to be OK, Tetrageddon Games, Blue Suburbia, etc.) under the pseudonym AlienMelon on the itch.io platform.

Photos: Matjaž Rušt

Credits

Production: Ljudmila, Art and Science Laboratory

With the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Department for Culture of the Municipality of Ljubljana and a generous donation by the Slovenia Games Association.