After travelling across 5 cities, GameJam Titans finally reached its final destination Pune, the cultural capital of Maharashtra. The competition was held at Bhartiya Vidyapeeth Medical College Auditorium where 33 teams which included 17 schools and total of 147 participants were seen participating in this game development competition.
The students were told to create a game using any software or platform around the theme ‘range’ or ‘word’. The judge panel included Norbert Cellier from Supinfogame Rubika, Alexis Madinier from DSK Green Ice Games and Vivek Dani from Rhippo Studios.
One of the jury members Norbert said, “The theme given to kids — Range or Word was a difficult one and they could have incorporated both the themes in one but they have managed to do a good job given the time and experience they had. Though it was a big risk for students to bring forth their game in front of adults, they took the time and efforts to come up such brilliant games and they have the capabilities to sell it off as well.”
The excitement and jitters in the auditorium was quite visible and kids were seen helping out their competitors as well. The senior students from Bhartiya Vidyapeeth also gave hand to these little geniuses. We also witnessed teams coming all the way from Gujarat and participating sportingly. The teams showcased their games which were built within 4 days time to the jury and the judges sure had a tough time selecting the winner as the competition was neck to neck. After a lot of discussion the students of Podar International School bagged the first prize and now will be heading to NGDC.
Eyes filled with tears, the winning team came to collect their award and were totally overwhelmed as this win was totally unexpected to them. These little intellects Saksham J, Swastik G, Anushka W, Prakhar M, and Pranav L have achieved this at a young age of 11 and they said, “The whole journey has been fantastic and we got to learn a lot through this. Now we have a better understanding on how developers develop games and the kind of efforts they out in. Thanks to the initiative taken by Mindbox and NASSCOM we are now exposed to the gaming world.”
Alexis who had also judged the 2014 Pune Game Jam Titans was pleased to see the turnout this year. “It was 3 to 4 times bigger, more teams and students were seen this year. There has been an immense improvement in the quality of games and can’t wait to see what the event has to offer in the upcoming year.”
The teams who won across the 6 cities will be seen showcasing their games at the NASSCOM Game Developers Conference which is going to be held at Pune in 5-7 November 2015.
