On the 24th and 25th of October, we visted TalTech at the TipiLAN 2025 event. The event took place in TalTech’s main building and hosted pretty large esports competitions. The entire main auditorium was full of competitive gamers who brought their PCs to the LAN party. There was also a large expo area located in the main lobby and the Student House sections of the building. Alongside us were other educational institutions, such as Tallinn University and Game Up! Academy with their own booths.

In our area, we showcased student projects and thesis works closely tied to our study lab and the University of Tartu: Tiksu-Toksu, Psyrreal, Blastronaut, and DeltaVR. Similar to our area at MängudeÖÖ, we hosted a competition. The first 200 visitors who solved challenges in each of the games received mystery prizes.

Tiksu-Toksu

This game was the winner of the University of Tartu Pro Game Jam 2024. The theme of that jam was “Tartu” due to Tartu being the European Capital of Culture at the time. The game was made in two days by two of our computer science alumni, a very talented game artist, and a mathematics student. With a very simple mechanic of just moving and herding Tiksu’s (the mascot of the University of Tartu) into the university building, the game is very easy to learn. However, different sectors with varying time periods randomly appear on the level. In the pre-historic sector, Tiksus are still eggs and need to be pushed around. In the future sector, Tiksus have turned into evil robots and attack the player character. You can play the game yourself on this link.

Psyrreal

Psyrreal is a virtual reality experience that our VR researcher Madis Vasser is developing. We are using it to research if the positive effects of psychedelic drugs could be replicated with a virtual reality experience mimicing the psychedelic visual stimuli. Results are promising. At the event, we showed a shortened version of the entire Psyrreal experience. You can learn more about Psyrreal on this link.

Blastronaut

This video game has been developed by our game design and development educator Jaanus Jaggo as a private project. In our lab, we like to offer our students potential thesis topics on working with real world applications. Over the years, one of the projects students have chosen to do their thesis work on, has been Blastronaut. The game features many technical and game design challenges that our students have chosen to try and tackle for their theses. You can find out more about the game from this link.

DeltaVR

Our booth visitors could also virtually visit the Delta building in DeltaVR. Being a virtual reality application, things can happen that do not in real life. For example, the player could defend the building from UFOs with a bow. The DeltaVR experience has had a lot of recent improvements, like it now features the Bolt self-driving car prototype from our institute’s Autonomous Driving Lab, more intuitive user flow, and better overall audio design. This project has been completely developed by our students who have chosen it for their thesis and internship work. More about it on this link.

Overall we had a great expo and met a lot of new people interested in our video game, computer graphics, and XR studies. Thank you for coming to visit and play our games! Thanks also to the TipiLAN organizers for inviting us!