USC Games Expo 2026 spotlights surreal student game worlds

USC Games Expo 2026 put a fresh class of student-made games in front of players, with projects about a wandering tongue, a doomed Greek king and a nightmare apartment tour leading the charge.

The spring showcase, run through USC’s School of Cinematic Arts’ Interactive Media & Games Division, has been held for more than a decade. Jim Huntley, an associate professor of Interactive Media & Games and head of marketing for USC Games, told Deadline the event has grown into what he described as the world’s largest academic games showcase.

What is the USC Games Expo?

The USC Games Expo is an annual event where visitors can try student projects, including digital games, tabletop games and themed entertainment installations. Any currently enrolled USC student with a game can submit work, according to Huntley, though a major focus is the Advanced Games Project, the program’s capstone course.

In that course, multidisciplinary teams spend three semesters taking an original concept to a playable demo. Huntley told Deadline the process runs about 18 months, with teams operating like small studios before showing their work to the public.

USC Games has also added a semester for pre-production, Huntley said, giving teams more time to test and refine ideas before full production begins. He said the program talks with studios and publishers about what graduates will need, while trying not to chase every short-lived industry fad.

Artificial intelligence is part of that conversation. Huntley said USC Games wants students to learn core skills such as coding, writing and design by hand first, treating AI as a tool rather than a replacement for craft.

Which student games stood out at the USC Games Expo?

One of the featured projects was Aftertaste, a 2D side-scrolling narrative platformer from creative director Baozee, 22, of Hefei, China. The game follows Tami, a sentient tongue, as she explores the body of Keh, an overworked chef who has lost her sense of taste and her passion for cooking.

Baozee told Deadline the idea came from a stress management class and lessons about Chinese medicine, where tastes, emotions and organs are connected. She said early feedback was split, with some people put off by the idea of a walking tongue and others drawn to its strange-cute style.

Sisyphus’s Worst Day (Again), led by Jason Lin, 21, from Taiwan, turns Greek mythology into a 3D puzzle game. Lin told Deadline he first wanted to make a game about loops, then landed on Sisyphus after looking for a story players would recognize.

In the game, players build contraptions to keep Sisyphus trapped in his cycle. Lin said the early challenge was getting a large team to believe in a design before the first demo proved how the puzzles would work.

Unrealtor, directed by Ariel Sol, 25, of Chicago, takes apartment hunting in Los Angeles and bends it into a surreal local co-op puzzle game. Sol told Deadline two players tour a potential rental, only for the house to become a strange labyrinth as the landlord keeps trying to sell it to them.

Sol said the game grew from an interest in optical illusions and the awkward logic of apartment tours. Its main mechanic uses perspective, asking players to view objects from particular angles to form a 2D image across a split screen.

The three projects point to the range USC is trying to foster: personal stories, oddball mechanics and student teams learning how to turn a pitch into something playable while real people watch, react and solve their way through it.

This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.