That's almost the exact experience I had in my first term of university. Everyone was making connect 4 and sudoku and they told me I couldn't write a Doom-style raycasting engine. That was the reason I had to do it!
It didn't even count towards course credit, but by the time I submitted I'd built everything, with an in-game level editor and reflective surfaces (all software-rendered). It was way beyond what I had ever achieved, and completing that project totally changed my view of what was possible.
The first engineer we hired got the job even though he us still in school for exactly that reason. He had a hardware assignment to build a bios: he built a real OS on top of that with a compliler just to finalize it in his mind.
Make sure that story comes through on your resume.
Hmm, a term was about 10 weeks so I guess this must have taken about 4 or 5 weeks. But I was working on it a ridiculous amount.
My friends called it "Ray" and would leave funny drawings on my desk depicting them partying while I played with Ray. Or if I had been partying with them, they'd all groan when we arrived home and I set to work. But it was definitely worth it.
It didn't even count towards course credit, but by the time I submitted I'd built everything, with an in-game level editor and reflective surfaces (all software-rendered). It was way beyond what I had ever achieved, and completing that project totally changed my view of what was possible.