17.03.2023

We organized Game Jam for the students at SoftUni Svetlina high-school

Together with SoftUni Svetlina high school in Sofia we organized the first-ever Game Jam for students. Young people from grades 8 to 12 were challenged to develop their own games on the theme FUTURE.

On the first day, we brought the students together for a few lectures to help them through the game-making process. Vasil Anastassov and Boyan from DevHubOne talked about game design and programming and gave the students valuable advice. The co-founder of ARC Academy, Milin Djalaliev, pointed out good practices in presenting the final projects.

The second day was entirely dedicated to working on the projects. The six teams gathered at the SoftUni Svetlina base, where together they embarked on developing their games. The student mentors from ARC Academy – Krastyu Tomov, Tony Karidkov, and Paul Mosku – were always by their side and helped them with specific advice and guidance.

At the end of the day came the long-awaited moment when all teams had to present their projects to our jury – Ivan Atanasov, game designer with many years of experience and speaker at ARC Academy, Vasil Anastasov, creator of DevHubOne, and Hellyana Velinova, PR in the game industry and organizer of a number of games jams.

Each team had 5 minutes to present their project. After the presentation, the jury asked additional questions to the participants related to the game development process.

The criteria by which the jury evaluated the teams’ projects were compliance with the Future theme, level of completion, gameplay, visual style, and mechanics.

The winner was the eighth-grade team Rapitfirewith their racer Neon Velocity.

The game takes us to the year 2104 – global warming continues, growing food is difficult and goods are becoming more expensive. All professions have been taken over by AI. The only way people make money is spaceship racing.

Second was the team with the original name Mujut prilep with the shooter Outlander. The third place was shared by the teams No Idea and Inkompetent with the games Singularity – a multiplayer game in which robots fight through black holes, and Azure Retribution – a fighting game whose mechanics allow the player to predict the next move of his opponent before they do it.

Among the projects was a puzzle game in which a robot detective solves dangerous cases and a shooter about the adventures of a 33-year-old Nintendo Wii fan.

The winners won a course of their choice from ARC Online, and there were prizes for all entrants from our partners Gameloft Sofia and Chibi Phoenix, to whom we are very grateful!

You can check the students’ projects here. See some pictures from the School Game Jam: