Burgas, on the Black Sea, Feb. 15 (BTA/GNA) – A game called Echoes of the Roots, created by a group of 12th-grade students and centred on the subject of archaeology and ancient ruins, won the top prize at the 7th Burgas Game Jam, the organizers from BurgasLab said on Wednesday.
Six teams whose members were between 5 and 48 years of age took part in the competition. They had 48 hours to create a game on the general theme of Roots. They presented their games to a jury and an audience and took questions from them.
The authors of the winning game Echoes of the Roots are Stanimir Lambov and Hristo Denchev, who study at the Konstantin Fotinov Vocational School of Electrical Engineering and Electronics in Burgas. It is about an exciting 3D-world adventure of an archaeologist who discovers a mystical relic. It gives him the power to control plants and roots with magical properties. The main character navigates around ancient ruins using his newfound abilities to solve puzzles and unravel mysteries.
A team of two artists and a software developer from the Black Sea city of Varna, collectively called Hit Studio, placed second. Their game Root For The Grasshopper was inspired by the lifecycle of a grasshopper. The player steers a jumping grasshopper which needs to avoid obstacles on its way through a forest.
Third place went to the game Roots Land, created by Spider Roots, who had the youngest contestant, a five-year-old boy called Michael. The kid participated in the competition together with his mother. They created an educational game which gives knowledge about soil, plants, pests and the way roots feed. The player helps a strawberry seed shoot up and bear fruit. He needs to choose the best strategy to grow the plant and protect it from dangerous weeds and pests.
In keeping with current trends, one of the teams used artificial intelligence developed by Midjourney to generate images for its own product.
All games from the Burgas competition can be viewed on the website of Game Jam 2023, a worldwide initiative which this year covered 800 locations in 108 countries. A total of 39,483 people around the globe created 7,630 games in 48 hours.
The next edition of the competition will be held between January 26 and 28, 2024, BurgasLab said.
BTA/GNA