Josef Farrugia, a second-year BSc (Hons) Creative Computing student, was named overall winner of the third Games Development Challenge, organised recently by St Martin’s Institute of IT.

The competition involves students and graduates who, in teams of four or five, develop an original computer game over five months between July and November.

Six teams and their original games competed – five from St Martin’s Institute and one from the University of Malta.

Mr Farrugia decided to finish the project even though his Go Far teammates gave up on the project. His game is aptly named Fireworks. The runner up team is Codex Delta for Air Circuit. The game also won the best digital art prize. Ernest Formosa led the team with team members Gianfranco Siracusa, Joseph Caruana and Jean-Carl Grech.

DisGuise scooped the prize for Best Audio for Tiki Totem Runner. The team, led by Noel Abdilla, included Mark Said, Stephen Robert Spiteri and Michele Schembri.

The other games in the competition were Scarecrow Siege by Ultimatum Games, Cross Country Capers by Red Eye Coding, and Forgotten Mage by Forgotten Mage.

The competition was judged by a panel chaired by Gareth Lewis of Lionshead Studios. The judges included Ingo Mesche from AV Technologies, Nilsen Filc of Puzzi, Nick Porsche of Rocksolid Games, Richard Ham, Mick Hanrahan and Kelvin Marrow of TRC Family Entertainment.

All judges praised the very high standard of the games and the variety of concepts developed by the students and their very short learning curve to achieve the standard.

The competition involves team-building and team dynamics, the presentation of milestones to the panel of teachers with interim reports to illustrate progress, and the game which is added to the student’s portfolio – a great benefit for job opportunities.

The challenge was supported by Malta Enterprise, TRC Family Entertainment, Medina Consultants and Lighthouse and Ashley. St Martin’s is an affiliate of the University of London international programme. The games may be viewed at http://gamedev.stmartins.edu/showcase .

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