The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has revealed the four games that will make up their BAFTA Young Game Designers showcase at EGX 2019! BAFTA YGD celebrates new games talent and inspires the UK’s future game makers by giving young people the chance to design or make their own game.
To learn more about BAFTA YGD, please visit: http://ygd.bafta.org/
If you’d like to make an appointment to play the games, meet the developers, or speak to a member of the BAFTA team, please contact Melissa Phillips at Melissap@bafta.org
LASERASE: Demolition in the Future – Max Robinson
Max was 14 years old when he won the 2019 BAFTA YGD Game Making 10-14 Years Award.
“A demolition puzzle game where the player uses a mirror to reflect a laser at targets to blow them up… avoiding lethal TNT which on detonation would blow you up!”
Every level, the player is given one to three mirrors and a few bolted mirrors. These are what they have to use to win the level. Unfortunately for the player, there are also some obstacles. There is TNT laid around the demolition site which the player must not detonate using the TNT. If this happens, the level is lost and the player has to start again. The bolted mirrors cannot be moved whereas the normal mirrors can be moved by clicking dragging.
Making this game I learnt how to make looping transitions using the ‘transition’ library in Corona and I learnt how to use ray-casting within the physics library. I learnt how lasers and light reflect off mirrors and how to use a formula to predict the reflection in my game. I also learnt a way of organising my levels. I used a two dimensional array to choose the positions of the blocks. I learnt a new easing transition for the scrolling on the level select screen. I learnt how to use particle 2dx to make explosion particles in my game and I learnt how to translate a .json file into a lua table.
Wip – Adam Pace
Adam was 18 years old when he won the 2019 BAFTA YGD Game Making 15-18 Years Award having previously been a finalist in the 2018 competition.
“A short story-driven platformer about friendship, loss and moving forward.”
You the player come across a PC that is running an old operating system and has been out of use for many years. Stored within it you find an abandoned game project and its protagonist Char1, a highly advanced AI that has been running on the desktop. Char1 asks you to help him navigate through the game’s levels and defeat the colourful characters that exist in the world. Through the adventure, he forms a bond with you (the player) and tells you more about himself and the game’s creation. As you approach the end of the journey, you come realise the unfortunate reality of Char1’s existence and he asks you to make the ultimate decision regarding his future.
Through working on Wip, I developed numerous skills in game development, art, animation and, most of all, storytelling and world-building. I tried taking on a whole new way of creating games, taking more time to focus on the story and atmosphere of the game. The story is one I’d wanted to tell for a while as it has a message that means a lot to me.
As well with the atmosphere, in my previous games I’ve often overlooked the power of lighting and how it can really set the tone of a level. So with each level I tried using different techniques to get a different feeling whilst playing through. This worked especially well with the final stage where the bright colourful lights contrast with the grey lifeless city.
For future development, I would like to add a way for the player to interact with Char1. Like with simple yes and no answers which would change the outcome of the story and Char1’s attitude towards the player. This would give a much more interesting dynamic to the game and make the player’s experience more emotional.
Maggie – Harry Thurston
Harry was 10 years old when he won the BAFTA YGD 2018 Game Making 10-14 Years Award
“A minimalist puzzle platformer in which you guide Maggie, a cute red cube, through a series of levels using only her ability to stretch. Good luck!”
The game is a demo in which you explore Maggie’s world by growing and shrinking. The ten levels in the demo start easy but get more challenging as Maggie moves through them. On her journey Maggie discovers that she has magnetic powers which enable her to defy gravity and allow her more freedom to move around each level.
Maggie is my first program using Unity so I have had to learn a lot about how to use that platform. In particular I have learned how to lerp objects to change their size. I have also had to learn about ray casting to check objects’ relative positions. Finally I had to learn some C# as I had only used Scratch and Small Basic before.
I hit a few problems with Maggie to do with ray casting. The main problem was to work out how far to send the ray cast. The ray cast is always sent from the centre of the object but Maggie’s size changes all the time. On paper I worked out how long it would have to grow for three different Maggie sizes and then work out how the ray cast size needed to change depending on distance, scale and offset. And it worked!
Super Boson – Prithvi Kohli (17), East Molesey
Prithvi was 17 years old when he won the BAFTA YGD 2018 Game Making 15-18 Years Award
“An energetic and mind-bending puzzle/action game about particle physics, which aims to inspire scientific curiosity and interest in physics and other STEM fields amongst younger audiences by portraying science in a fun and engaging way.”
The player must navigate and reach the end of levels by taking control of different subatomic particles. Each of these is unique and behaves differently, requiring the player to think carefully and plan ahead for which particle to be and when in order to overcome obstacles.
To develop my skills, I did some reading on game design and studied designs of other games and how they achieved a deep but simple and focused design. I concentrated a lot on specifically what I wanted the experience of the game to be like, and designed the game to focus on delivering that experience.
I was studying particle physics in my A-level physics class at the time, and this came to mind as inspiration as particle physics involves quick-moving particles and a lot of complexity. This seemed perfect for a fast-paced game requiring the player to think deeply about the complexity of the game design and rules to figure out levels. Furthermore, it presented an opportunity to portray science in a fun, interactive way in order to hopefully inspire scientific curiosity amongst players, especially younger audiences.
While prototyping my game early on, I had difficulty perfecting the design and mechanics so as to keep them simple and easy to understand. I assigned a colour to each particle, requiring the player to not only consider the different motions of particles when swapping between them but also their colour as certain particle colours are required in certain situations. . I also added antiparticles to add more complexity to the design, but in an easy-to-understand manner, since antiparticles simply do the opposite of what their normal particle counterparts do. This adds an element of skill to the game as the player masters the complex behaviours of each particle.
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