Game Academy Winners Announced
Moles, fish and cats all feature in the Academy competition

By Heather Nagey

I know you've all been waiting impatiently to find out who won the competition for the best game redesign from the Game Academy.

This was a two part competition, with a prize for the best "re-skin" of Galactic Gauntlet, and a prize for the best new/reworked gameplay.

I must say we were delighted with the quality of the entries for this competition, and judging it was quite difficult. However, we have now managed to pick winners in both categories, each of which will win an iPad.

The Skinning Winner

I'm very pleased to say that the winner in the category of best re-skin for Galactic Gauntlet, is Moley, by Jarren Harkema. Congratulations Jarren!

Jarren is a homeschooled highschool student who discovered the Livecode Academy a week before it began. He has always fancied the idea of creating apps, but never had the resources and money to try. Jarren told me:

"When I found Livecode, it just seemed like a perfect fit! I learn very well visually, working through things if I can see them. These webinars, and Livecode in general, fit my way of learning really well! "

What really interested Jarren about Livecode was the ability to instantly see the results while working on a project. He also enjoyed the flexibility with graphic files. By the 2nd week of the course, he was spending as much time creating graphics as in coding. As he says:

"Sure rockets are cool, but has anyone seen a fun and engaging game involving a mole avoiding a host of emissaries?"

The reason he entered this competition was to show the variety of games you can make using the same basic code. He learned a lot about programming, but his focus was in giving the game that polished and visually appealing look.

Judges comments:

"Everything about this game fits together really nicely - the individual graphics are good, but they also work together to give the game a coherent design and theme. Everything feels nicely polished, and the way the design has been integrated with the code is smooth and detailed. The music and sounds fit the theme of the game nicely."

"I loved the originality of this idea, its very entertaining which is after all the primary function of a game."

The Gameplay Winner

The prize in this category goes to Michael Jurgensen, for Galaxy. Well done Michael!

Michael has been interested in game development since middle school. It all started when he got RPG Maker for the Playstation. It was a video game that allowed him to design his own RPG games. In high school he took computer programming classes and used the concepts learned in class to help him understand game development. After he graduated college with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, he started his search to enter the game development field. Game design is his passion.

He entered this competition to build his resume as a game developer. Michael said:

"I am always attempting to learn new languages to broaden my skills. It has always been one of my dreams to enter the game industry and have people enjoy playing my games. This competition is a great opportunity to test myself. There was a wide range of experience between the students attending the game academy. As a recent college graduate it would look impressive on my resume if I won a competition against programmers twice my age and with significantly more experience. Lastly, I would like to win an iPad. My iPod is no longer being updated so I miss out on the new technology being developed on the APP store. It would be great as a developer to see how Unreal runs on a mobile device. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I really enjoyed working with Live Code and designing games on a mobile platform."

Judges comments:

"Here we can see a really nice example of a simple side scroller, where the basic concept of what we did in the academy has been taken to the next level. Rather than just dodging obstacles, we're now able to fire at the enemies - and vice-versa. We've also got a level system, very detailed and nicely handled enemy movement, persistent upgrades to be purchased at the end of each level, and so on. The whole thing feels like a really nice and fully featured example of a retro-style arcade game, but most importantly, it is clear there is some very sleek code at work behind the scenes."

Congratulations to both our winners, your iPad's will be on their way to you shortly!

As we said at the start, the quality of entries was high, and we'd like to acknowledge some of the other submissions. Honorable mentions go to three other entries.

'Fin Spinner' by Ulrik Bersvendsen: There is a lot of potential in both the design and the code here, and with more time and polishing of the code it could be a really nice game! I particularly liked the way that the concept we worked with in the academy has been expanded on greatly.

'Fish Life' by Geoff Taylor: At a glance, this game follows what we did in the academy quite closely, but there are a couple of things that set it apart - the implementation of a difficulty system is very nice. There are other significant alterations to the base code at work. The design is rather nice as well!

'The Black Cat' by James Little: This game was interesting. It would need a lot of work and polish on both the design and code to fulfil it's potential, but I really like where the author is going with it.

I'd like to end by thanking everyone who took part, both in the competition and in the Game Academy. It was a lot of fun judging this, and we all very much enjoyed working with all of you and sharing the joy of coding with LiveCode.

About the Author Heather Nagey is Customer Services Manager for RunRev Ltd.