Game Jam Winners Revealed!
With 260 students participating in the Game Jam spread over 55 Teams from 15 educational institutions, this was the initiatives biggest and best Game Jam yet. Year on year there is an increasing level of competition as students continue to improve and impress with their submissions.
Described as “The most astonishing showcase of games talent ever seen in a Ukie Student Game Jam” by Ukie Student organiser, Leon Cliff, the judges were unsurprisingly overwhelmed when choosing a winner, but one team undoubtedly shone through when judging.
Before the winner is revealed below, Ukie would like to say an massive thank you to our partners Epic Game and Jagex for supporting the Ukie Student Membership scheme, allowing us to put these events on. Ukie would also like to say thank you to the mentors who took time out of their busy lives and schedules to guide student teams through this process. Ukie students are extremely grateful for your support.
Ukie Student Game Jam 2018
First Place Winners!
It was incredibly tough to pick a winner this year given the caliber of work submitted, however the judges have decided and this years game jam winners and therefore champions are NTFS 2 from the National Film and Television School. NTFS 2 scored highly across the marking criteria board, especially for visual impression where they recieved full marks.
NTFS 2 (Happy Hollow) - Ukie Student Game Jam Winner 2018
Second Place!
In a very close second, this years runners up are Rejuvenate from Warwickshire College Group. When we say close second, we mean it - there was very little between 1st and 2nd this year. The judges were extremely impressed with the concept and playability of this game.
Rejuvenate - Ukie Student Game Jam Runner Up 2018
Accessibility Award
The Accessibility Award is gifted to a team that takes into consideration different impairments that could potentially affect someone’s ability to play their game. Thus, this involves thinking about the inclusion of as many people as possible and not the unnecessary exclusion of anyone. With over 20% of players having a disability, it's great to have students think about this when creating their games.
The winner of this year’s Accessibility Award is Team Win from Brighton University! They showcased a well thought out and considerate design. Ian Hamilton one of the judges, a consultant for accessibility in games praised their ‘Simple, clear controls and mechanic’ but admitted, what really made them stand out was their handling of colour-blindness stating “[it was] an excellent implementation achieved through testing with simulators”.
Team Win (Colourful Chameleon) - Accessibility Award 2018
'Mentor of the Universe' Award
This year, we had an incredible amount of support from the industry, with many industry professionals putting themselves forward to mentor a Ukie Student Game Jam team. We can't thank the mentors enough, and in our eyes you're all worthy of this title. As ever, we ask our Ukie Student teams to submit their mentor for this award, providing an overview as to why they have gone above and beyond. This years mentor of the universe is Joe Walsh from Mediatonic Games.
A word from the teams that submitted Joe: "Joe was a great mentor to the team throughout the Game Jam. He gave us great advice that helped us to shape our game and maintain the scope of our project and push us to make something interesting. To add to this Joe had to mentor another team to boot, and it never felt like he was favouring our team over the other or vice versa. Whenever Joe would suggest or question something that the team disagreed with, he would listen patiently and take our opinions into consideration and understand what we were trying to accomplish. Overall, he was a great mentor that helped us a lot during the game jam."
Social Champions Award
The Social Champion award was running for the first time and generated truly astonishing results for the Game Jam's presence, creating over half a million impressions, thousands of engagements and over 1,000 tweets directed at the event. The first ever winners of the Social Champion Award is Team 10, who were incredibly active across twitter during the game jam and drove an very impressive level of engagement, giving community managers in the games industry a run for their money. Use #ukiegamejam2018 to find tweets!
A Final Word
The judges really had their work cut out for them this year and managed handle the process with professionalism and integrity. The judges were well versed in their line-of-work to judge the creation; Gorm Lai, President and Co-founder at The Global Game Jam, Marcia Deakin, Games Partnership Director at NextGen Skills Academy, Ishai Smadja, Product Manager at King and Ian Hamilton, Accessibility Specialist.
We’d like to thank the UK games industry for donating prizes to the future industry leaders; Jagex, Milky Tea, Konami, Pocket Gamer (Steel Media) and Meetspace awarded winning teams with an array of prizes and Belong Arenas generously gifted all participants a free one-hour games session at any of their Arenas around the country.
With the end of an immensely successful year nigh, we’d like to thank everyone who was involved in the running of the Ukie Student Game Jam and congratulate everyone who participated in the making of the games, every-single game we saw was at a professional standard and we now look forward to 2019 pushing the initiative for an even bigger and better Game Jam.
Follow Ukie Students for updates or get in contact with Leon to find out how your business can get involved.