Games development students from IT Sligo have won two prestigious awards at the 2017 Games Fleadh, held at Limerick Institute of Technology.
Second and third year students collected the top prizes in the ‘Best Game Trailer’ and ‘Best Game Story’ categories at the Games Fleadh, which is an annual digital games programme festival and is recognised as the premier gaming event for third level institutions across the island of Ireland,
Now into its 14th year, this year’s event was hosted by Limerick Institute of Technology.
Year 2 Games Development student Philip Darcy won the award for ‘Best Game Trailer’ for his game Space Racer 2069 – a top down 2D multiplayer car racing game. The game was developed solely by Philip over the course of the year using GameMaker Studio and saw players compete for the top spot in this action-packed racer. The game features local multiplayer of up to 4 people or against an unforgiving artificial intelligence (AI). Philip’s entrycaught the attention of judges with its humorous tone and clips of the original moon landing in 1969.
A team of Year 3 Games Development students won the award for ‘Best Game Story’ for their game Factory Defect. The game is a sci-fi action adventure puzzle racer set in a robotics factory testing grounds. Contestants play an autonomous drone selected to test the production line to secure a smooth run for the fourth quarter of 2259. Developed using the cutting edge Unreal Engine 4 game development toolset these students pushed themselves out their development comfort zones to produce a tense and exciting game experience.
The Games Fleadh is open to all third level institutions and this year featured a wide array of high quality entries from around the country.
“The competitions give students the opportunity to showcase their skills to peers and have their games judged from industry companies such as EA Games, GameSparks and FirstData,” says Neil Gannon, Programme Chair of the BSc in Computing in Games Development at IT Sligo.
IT Sligo students have a proven track record at the Games Fleadh, winning their first awards in 2009 on their first year of entry. Since then, they have gone on to collect a number of the top awards, including: Best Visual Engineering, Best in use of Microsoft Cloud Technologies and Best in Multiplayer Technologies, all in 2016; Best Original Game Art in 2015; Best in Animation and Best Xbox 360 Game (2013); Best in Original Audio Music (2012) and Best Original Games Play and overall runner up in 2010.