On December 9th, Athens Academy senior Alex Tally successfully defended his Capstone project to a panel of faculty and administrators as the culmination of two years of work.

Alex’s project, “Game Design,” developed from his longtime interest in coding and gaming. Over the course of the past year and a half, he designed the online board game Vanguardium, “taking a very simple idea to a fully-fledged board game.”

Alex worked closely with two mentors for his project. Game design tutor Alexander Frey helped him develop his coding and problem-solving skills, while Athens Academy math teacher Eric Bright worked with him on the overall game development process. Last summer, Alex attended a ten-day game design course as part of the National Student Leadership Conference at UCLA, where he learned the importance of group work, processing constructive criticism through feedback from peers. His fellow group members helped him improve Vanguardium’s art and assets and offered other useful suggestions.

One of the biggest challenges Alex faced during this process was the complete crash of his computer system that resulted in a loss of all his work early last fall. Although he considered leaving the Capstone program, Alex instead chose to start over from the beginning, recreating the game in its entirety. He ultimately switched to a different design platform— one that saved to the cloud and also allowed him to share his game on Steam, a network of designers and coders.

Despite losing all his work, Alex made workflow changes that ultimately shaped his entire experience, learning flexibility, patience, and diligence. According to Capstone committee member Geoffrey Walton, “I think you learned the value of teamwork and the value of other people’s strengths. You also developed grit and perseverance and learned the importance of a plan.”

Alex’s game Vanguardium is currently available to the public on the Steam workshop site, where it can be purchased, downloaded and played by anyone who is interested. “Releasing it to the Steam workshop allows other people to see and edit the code of the game as well as encouraging aspiring game developers to experiment with existing games, ” says Alex. He also hosted a playtest on campus last October, where he invited Upper School students and faculty to play the game. The playtest resulted in more constructive feedback that helped him to improve his process and piqued the interest of classmates who enjoy coding and gaming.

Congratulations to Alex on persevering through a difficult process and growing personally as a result through his Capstone project!The Capstone Project is an opportunity for Upper School students to explore a passion via four criteria: research, mentorship, experiential learning, and an outward contribution. Each student submits a research paper detailing an aspect of the project, and they defend the project before a committee of faculty and administrators, similar to a Ph.D. oral defense. Students whose projects are approved by the committee receive the Capstone designation at commencement in May.

Athens Academy is an independent, co-educational school for students in K3 through 12th grade, located on a beautiful 152-acre campus in Northeast Georgia. Now in its 57th year, Athens Academy pursues its mission of “excellence with honor” through academics, athletics, fine arts, and service and leadership. Ranked the #1 private school in Athens, #9 college prep school in the state of Georgia, and #1 private school in Northeast Georgia (Niche.com).

For more information, please contact Kelley Cuneo, communications director, at [email protected] or 706-433-2410.