Games Expo 2025
UK Games Expo (UKGE) is the largest tabletop Games Convention in the UK, where all aspects of the tabletop gaming hobby are represented under one roof. This year we were joined on the stand by 5 students who had their manufactured prototypes that they were able to demonstrate to the general public. The 5 games were:
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Money Maketh the Man is a turn-based educational board game that simulates stock market trading to teach players, particularly GCSE and A-Level students, key economic concepts and soft skills. |
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Lab Rats is a serious, educational card game designed to teach foundational chemistry concepts to early secondary school students (ages 10+). |
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O! The Tragedy is a serious educational game designed to teach students Aristotle’s key concepts of tragedy—hamartia, catharsis, peripeteia, and anagnorisis—through interactive, constructivist gameplay |
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Unplanned Final Stand is an improv-based, serious tabletop RPG designed for theatre students to enhance their improvisation and collaborative storytelling skills. |
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Mages & Manifolds is a serious tabletop game designed to teach the fundamentals of formal language and automata theory—specifically deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata (DFA/NFA)—through interactive, narrative-based gameplay. |
It would be fair to say that our students were excellent, oftentimes running the stand single-handedly whilst I was out exploring the show. The 'Shut Up and Sit Down' guys paid us a visit - this is what they had to say:
The students' feedback to presenting at the expo varied, ranging from 'Expos aren't really my thing' to 'the best experience of my life.'
For us, this was an opportunity to share our students' stories and successes with a wider audience and to showcase some of the innovative serious games they had created.
We've already started planning for next year's event...
