Dare to be Digital winners announced at games festival
Abertay University's, Dare to be Digital, international student game design competition came to a climax this weekend with the reveal of three BAFTA-nominated winners.
An audience of 10,000 people played the shortlisted games over three days at the Dare ProtoPlay games festival in Dundee.
The three winning games will now compete for the BAFTA 'Ones to Watch' award at the 2013 BAFTA Video Games Awards.
The winners of the competition were, 'Starcrossed', for Windows Phone 7 by Kind of a Big Deal (team leader Kimi Sulopuisto, Petri Liuska, Andrew MacLean, Minttu Meriläinen, Vili Viitaniemi), 'Pixel Story', for PC by Loan Wolf Games (team leader Martin Cosens, Luke Harrison, Ashley Hayes, Thomas McParland, Benjamin Rushton), and 'Project Thanatos', for PC and virtual reality headset by Raptor Games (team leader Hugh Laird, Andrew Coles, Tom Kemp, Tom Laird, Alexandra Shapland).
Kimi Sulopuisto from Kind of a Big Deal, commented: "This is the biggest thing I’ve achieved in my life. I’d absolutely encourage anyone looking to make their own games to enter Dare to be Digital – you’ve nothing to lose, and you could win so much.
Johnny Minkley, BAFTA Games Committee member and Dare judge, added: "I’m hugely impressed with the standard of all the games on show and the professionalism and passion of all the Dare to be Digital teams.
"It was a hard choice for the judges, but all three BAFTA nominees are strong games and very different games."
Loan Wolf Games were also the winners of the new £25,000 Channel 4 prize. This means they will now be funded and supported to complete their game for commercial release.
Raptor Games also won a public vote for the Intel Visual Computing Tools Audience Award.
Professor Louis Natanson, who leads computer games education at Abertay University, said this years entrants were better than ever, adding the winners "stood out from the tough competition for their exceptional game design, playability and commercial appeal."