Alfred University sophomore Abby Atnafe, a native of Addis Ababa, Eth., has been meeting regularly in Myers Hall since the beginning of the 2025-26 academic year with other undergraduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, collaborating on a shared passion for computer programming.
The students gather under the auspices of the Axiom Club, an association of students that describes itself as dedicated “to finding the beauty of mathematics in every attribute of life from art and dance to board games and coding.” The Axiom Club in turn collaborates with the CASTLE Lab – an acronym for Computer and Software Technology Learning Experience – hosting math and computer events for students such as Abby.
“We have weekly educational/social meetings,” says Assistant Professor of Computer Science Alan Beadle, who mentors computer science students at Alfred. “We do group projects, such as writing software for (Alfred’s radio station) WALF, and we host programming competitions.”
Results of the most recent competition were unveiled late last year, after CASTLE students competed with each other in a contest to design the coolest computer games. Abby’s team, composed also of undergraduates Dagim Mindaye and Hana Alaghband, finished in first place with a lively computer game called Count Zoomula.
For those of us who remember arcade-style computer games in the 1980’s – played usually in bars for a quarter a pop – Count Zoomula has a familiar feel. A single figure (Zoomula) operates vertically while objects – monsters, ghosts, bats – fly at him from right to left. The goal is to avoid getting hit by the horizontally moving objects.
The game also features a “health bar” that drops whenever Count Zoomula is struck. The larger the striking object, the more quickly the health bar drops. “Some of the monsters kill you instantly,” Beadle says. The player can also seek out “coins” in the game in order to raise the health bar to higher levels.
CASTLE students used a common set of software libraries to develop the graphics. Abby’s team, for example, used a game engine called Arcade and utilized a “friendly,” according to Beadle, Application Programming Interface (API). Beadle developed a set of rubrics by which teams’ games could be judged, and several university faculty and staff members served as judges of the games, with the guidance of Beadle’s rubric.
Abby says CASTLE students also were given a theme on the opening day of the five-day design period. The theme this year was Halloween – hence the Count Dracula overtones. Each team was also free to choose any programming language.
The students plan to continue their meeting into the second semester of the academic year. Weekly CASTLE meetings are held in Myers Hall. For more information visit the CASTLE website.
