Student game design awards

Two second-year Electronic and Computer Engineering students from NUI Galway have won the annual XNA Ireland Challenges College Cup, which was held as part of the Games Fleadh event in Tipperary Institute yesterday. XNA is a games development platform from Microsoft, who were co-sponsors of the competition.

The NUI Galway students, Finn Krewer from Tubber, Co. Clare, and Padraig Meaney from Cloghan, Co. Offaly, won the competition with their updated version of Pac-Man, the thirty-year old classic video game where the object is to gobble as many dots as possible while avoiding the roaming ghosts.  Their game was entitled ‘Pac-Man Unleashed’, and featured four variants on the classic game including a multiplayer version, a limited visibility version, a ‘ghost infection’ version, and a combination of all three.

The winning entry was commended by the judges - representatives from colleges and Irish-based gaming companies including PopCap, Jolt and DemonWare - for 'having everything' in terms of coding, design, game play and music.  As well as winning the overall award, the students won the individual award for ‘Best in Game Play’.

According to John Breslin, lecturer in the School of Engineering and Informatics at NUI Galway: 'Ireland has a thriving computer games industry, as exemplified by Irish success stories such as DemonWare and Jolt Online from Irish entrepreneurs Sean Blanchfield and Dylan Collins.  There are also various international gaming companies in Ireland such as PopCap Games and Gala Networks.  This industry has huge growth potential in Ireland, and talented students such as Finn and Padraig bode well for its future success.'