IT computer game creation competition won by Josh

3 May 2019

IT teacher Paul Moore explains what's been going on in lessons:

Over the past three months, 22 IT BTEC Diploma second year students have been busy designing and developing their own computer games. Their brief was to create a game to meet the following criteria:

2D graphics
Arcade-style with a scoring system
Menu/Title screen before the game starts
PC compatible without any installation needed

All of the students came up with fantastic, creative solutions to meet the brief, using proper industry practice and managing their own projects effectively. Over the course of this project, students created detailed design documentation and developed their games using professional tools including the Unity game engine and Visual Studio IDE to develop their games using the C# programming language. To celebrate the efforts of the students in this project, they showcased their games in the Hub for anyone to play and vote for the game they thought was best. Students and staff played the games and cast their votes.

The game with the most votes was Gary’s Golem Gauntlet by Josh Woolley, featuring some lovely pixel art characters and backgrounds and a system which progressively increased the difficulty as you gained higher scores. Josh had a clear idea for the game he wanted to make from the outset and took on board feedback from his client and other testers to refine the gameplay experience and make a fun and engaging game that is simple to learn but difficult to master. Well done Josh!

Coming a close second with only two fewer votes was Bounce by Sebastian Salata, inspired by the original Nokia game which featured on certain models of mobile phone. This polished platform game was simple to learn with clear instructions and excellent design techniques to help guide the player through the level.