New Student Games to Release on Steam
Capstone games completed in Fall 2025 are set to release February 17 and March 2 on Steam.
Two new video games created by students in SMU Guildhall's graduate program for game development are set to launch on the Steam gaming platform over the next month.
Ling and the Corrupted Hollow, a beautiful puzzle-platforming game which uses adorable animal spirits to explore and restore balance, will launch February 17.
Kila: Hourbound, an action-adventure platformer which manipulates time with chromo-abilities to restore the world, will launch March 2.
Made by Cohort 34—who will graduate in May 2026—these Capstone games represent two years of game development education in the Master of Interactive Technology degree program. Go-to-market is facilitated by SMU Guildhall's publishing arm, GameLab, which bridges student-to-industry relationships by directly connecting students with industry via professional development and networking opportunities in tandem with SMU Guildhall's in-house Career Services department.
Scroll to learn more about each game below.
Studio-Modeled Game Development
SMU Guildhall cultivates a learning environment that looks and behaves like a game studio. The Team Game Production course sequence is central to this mission, providing students with studio-mirrored development processes to experience what it is realistically like to make games a modern studio, with accurate style and pace. Led by faculty members with decades of industry experience, our students learn how to make games by actually making games—at least 3 during their time in our program—including concepting, prototyping, building, testing, and releasing to public market.
Team size and composition evolves across each TGP course to allow students to take on both lead and supporting roles. Each team member contributes to the collaboration their own unique skills, which are advanced and refined through independent specialized study in Art Creation, Level Design, Production, or Programming. The first TGP course produces games made in small teams, while the second TGP course challenges the entire cohort to work together on a ~60-person team. These games serve as foundational stepping stones toward final large-scale, total-conversion Capstone projects such as those featured here.
How To Support Our Student Developers
- Visit both game pages and add to your Wishlist today
- Share the games with your network on social media
- Download the games when they launch
Wishlisting is doubly beneficial: good for you, good for the students. It will push alerts to you directly about releases and updates, and it will tell the algorithm to boost game promotion, helping the soon-to-graduate students get their work out to wider audiences—which is greatly beneficial in the job search process.
Learn More About Our Master's Degree
SMU Guildhall Games Coming Spring 2026 on Steam
-
Ling and the Corrupted Hollow
Releasing February 17
In this third-person puzzle-platforming game, use adorable animal spirits to explore the beautiful Hollow Woods. Possess and control the world around as you search for the soul shards to cleanse the corrupted Tree and restore balance to your home.
Control the world around you with Ling and her spirits as she is tasked with bringing balance to the corrupted Hollow Woods. Using various objects to search for powerful artifacts called soul shards, scattered across four levels, explore the realms to unlock the hidden story behind what happened to Ling's home and save the Hollow Woods.
Ling and the Corrupted Forest features a possession system that enables you to possess a variety of objects across the game, bestowing abilities to manipulate movement, run and jump across different platforms, and not lose your soul to the corrupted waters that plague the hollow woods. Each level is unique that explores the relationship Ling has with her home and how the spirits connect to The Hollow Woods.
-
Kila Hourbound
Releasing March 2
In this third-person, action-adventure platformer game for PC and Steam Deck, take on the role of Kila—a Keeper of Time—and embark on missions to return Aion to its original glory using your time-based chrono abilities.
Rewind and manipulate time, fight off the savages, and dash and jump across floating islands. Set in the fantastical world of Aion, your missions in Kila: Hourbound will transport you to a frozen hour, from sweltering sun to starry skies, with savages on the hunt. It is up to you to progress through the lands and take them down, with time as a special source of power you can manipulate.
Each mission features its own trials and unique encounters. Exploration and magical ruins call, but you must be quick, as the limited time to complete your missions is always counting down and an array of rogue bosses need to be taken down.