Canyon High School’s Honors App Development class hosted Demo Day on Wednesday, May 20 in room S-3 during lunch. The free event was an opportunity for students to showcase their games that they’ve been working on since the beginning of the spring semester to the rest of campus.

The computer science teacher, Mr. Josh Underwood, helped provide free drinks, cookies, and pizza to everyone who attended, getting help from others to help serve as hundreds of students made their way through the room. There were eight amazing games on display as listed below:

Cooked VR: A fun and intense cooking simulator, inspired by the popular game “Overcooked” – only it’s in virtual reality. Developed and designed by Gerard Bravo, Carson Soria, Kayleigh Behar, Rowan Hensley, and Madelyn Krestul.

Wilder Tears: A platformer/action game where you grapple and climb your way to the castletop to defeat the boss, Valafrix. Developed and designed by Tristan Garcia, Luccas Angelo, Keaton Alderman, Jesse Salazar, and Nickolas Cahill.

The Catacomb Hotel: A thrilling horror game where you progress through a creepy hotel to save your baby kitten from an evil bellhop. Developed and designed by Angelina Nguyen, Reese Lyncy Kharlyle Dagting, Devin Carr, Malia Tyra, and Vianney Segovia.

Dungeon Storm: A 2D dungeon crawler where you loot enemies for equipment and customize your spells to clear levels and rank your way up! Developed and designed by Robert Govea, Gustavo Cordova Silva, Mithil Dungrani, Surya Bhandari, and Angel Osorio.

The Deep: A 2D horror game where you must progress through different levels and ultimately survive the depths of the ocean. Designed and developed by Devin Carr, Gerard Bravo, and Luccas Angelo.

Alice and the White Rabbit: A co-op 2D game where players play as Alice and the White Rabbit in order to escape Wonderland’s temples. Designed and developed by Kayleigh Behar, Malia Tyra, Vianney Segovia, Reese Lyncy Kharlyle Dagting, and Angelina Nguyen.

Fruit Fall: A 2D game where the player must catch fruits falling from the trees in order to get the next best highscore. Designed and developed solely by Malia Tyra.

Dry Cycle VR: A virtual reality game where players fight Cyclers (rolling combat robots) across different eras and scenarios using authentic weapons. Designed and developed solely by Gerard Bravo. (It is looking to be released within the next year or so, so keep an eye out!)

Per the Hart District’s Instagram, Demo Day is inspired by major gaming and technology expos, celebrating creativity, problem solving, programming, and digital design whilst demonstrating the students’ real-world skills built through receiving such an incredible computer science education.

However, I wouldn’t completely consider the event to be annual. Mr. Underwood commented in an interview to KHTS that “if every single group gets to a point where I consider it a worthy product, then we have demo day. If even one group doesn’t get there, no Demo Day for that year,” Underwood said. “We’ve been running this class for probably 10 years, and this is our third-ever Demo Day.”

Honors App Development is the capstone course to Canyon High’s computer science pathway. In the fall, students learn more about C# programming, Unity, AI tools, and pitch project ideas with the class voting on the best concepts. They are taught real-world development and collaboration techniques such as Scum methodology as well. In the spring, students begin building their projects with a limited budget for assets, and they work completely from scratch.

But how would someone get to Honors App Development? Students can now either start from AP Computer Science Principles, the introductory course, or jump right into AP Computer Science A (known as Java on campus), the concentrator course, if they are willing to skip taking more time to learn the basics.

In Computer Science Principles, students learn to “design, evaluate solutions, and apply computer science to solve problems by developing algorithms and programs.” They also learn “how computing innovations and computing systems—including the internet—work, explore their potential impacts, and contribute to a computing culture that is collaborative and ethical.” Seeing that it is an Advanced Placement (AP) course, students will also build a portfolio that gets graded by the College Board alongside their exam at the end of the year. From experience, students also get the opportunity to learn to use a Microsoft Kinect and create a mini game using it.

AP Computer Science A builds on all the knowledge and skills learned in the previously required prerequisite course and focuses on the programming. Students that also have a strong understanding in their math course can request to skip straight to this course, learning to use data structures to organize large sets of data and implement algorithms. Students also get the chance to create a “Zork,” a project where they’ll get full creativity custody with a choose-your-own-adventure style game.

Canyon High has one of the best computer science programs in the state, and it is severely underrated. If you’re interested in taking one of the classes, or taking the pathway in general, please talk to your counselor when looking for classes for the next school year. If you have any questions about the program, don’t hesitate to contact Mr. Underwood as well. (He’s super cool, I promise!)