Two groups of gaming inventors from Auckland’s Media Design School have been greenlit by Steam, a global gaming marketplace.
The two games made by MA Game Studios and Itsfine games are “Dolly” and “Split,” respectively. Both teams are from Media Design School Studios accelerator programme.
Both games, which started out as academic projects, made it to the global Steam’s Greenlight’s Top 20 games, and were accepted in a record of 10 days after voting from gamers who tried out the prototypes.
Based in the United States, Steam Greenlight is owned by Valve, one fo the budgets game development studios in the world.
“In Split, you take control of a cube, which has the ability to break up and split into smaller cubes. Using whatever cubes you have at your disposal, you must try to solve puzzles to reach the door at the end of the level, bringing as much of yourself with you as possible,” said the game’s description in the Steam Community.
“But beware, split too much and your cube will be lost forever,” it added.
Dolly, on the other hand, “takes you by the hand through a strange and wondrous world, where beautifully hand-drawn environments slowly give way to the player’s sobering mystery.”
Media Design School, which is one of the country’s most awarded tertiary institutions for creative and digital technology qualifications, offers courses like game programming, graphic design, game art, and 3D animation and visual effects. See the complete list of courses here.
“We are thrilled by our success as we were only second year students at the time of developing the game and really didn’t expect it to get such a warm reception on the international stage,” said Itsfine production lead and programmer Tom O’Brien.
Members of both teams have also been grated scholarships to the Games Development Conference in San Francisco, to be held this coming March.