General Information
Students are required to submit using a One Drive or Google Drive folder shared with liam.noonan@tus.ie please ensure your college lecturer is also provided with this share URL
- Game Executable
- Source Code
- Design Doc
- A video Trailer Screencast max of 90 seconds
Closing date for submission of entry is Monday March 2nd 10:00am 2026
As states in the Rules Entrants will be accepted from 2nd, 3rd and/or 4th years that are full time undergraduate 3rd level courses and Fetac level 6 game design related courses. Entrants must have the approval of an academic mentor. The maximum number of team members is 6.
2025 Prize Categories
- Best Game built using a Game Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
- Best Game built using Software Libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing)
- Best in User Interface Design
- Best in Game Mechanics
- Best in Game Narrative
- Best in Use of Physics Algorithms
- Best in Use of AI Algorithms
- Best Video Game Trailer
- Best in Game Play
- Best in Original Art assets
- Best in Sound Design
Judging Criteria
Your entry will be judged using, but not limited to, the following criteria.
Game Play
- Clarity of Games’ goals
- Player is motivated to play the game again (i.e use of leaderboards, share score etc)
- Levels are creative and attractive with a ramp up of difficulty
- User interface is well defined and enhances the game
- The narrative of the game addresses the theme of addressing climate change and its impacts
- The Game Trailer would encourage someone to play the game
- Player can replay the game using a different approach/strategy
Game Mechanics
- The game poses a set of unique and interesting challenges for the player to overcome
- Implementation of the rules and procedures that guide the player and the game response to the player’s moves or actions
Algorithms
- How decisions are made in the game code, are they simple binary decisions, do they use simple calculations or do they implement a decision algorithm to guide the player or NPC in the game i.e. AI, Machine Learning, graph tree
- Use of Physics calculations to produce a more realistic game
Use of Programming and Game Engine Concepts
- Use of programming concepts and commenting of code
- Use of basic frameworks and libraries provided by the programming language or Game Engine. Has the code been designed with scalability and code reuse in mind i.e. inheritance, polymorphism etc
- Use of advanced frameworks, plugins and external APIs (or development of a custom library/API)
Game Dev Resources
Programming
Windows 11
- Visual Studio
- Visual Code
- Azure Dev Tools for Education (great student resource)
Frameworks and Engines
- RayLib (C, C++, Python, Rust, C#, Go, Java, Zig, Lua, Nim, Swift, Haskell, D, Odin, Ruby, Julia, TypeScript (via Deno))
https://www.raylib.com/ - SFML (C++)
https://www.sfml-dev.org/ - Unity (C# and Lua)
https://unity.com/ - UnReal Engine (C++)
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ - Godot Engine (GDScript, C#, VisualScript, and C++ and C)
https://godotengine.org/ - Construct 3 https://www.construct.net/en
JavaScript (HTML) Frameworks and Libraries
- CreateJS (HTML & JavaScript)
http://www.createjs.com/ - GameSalad (HTML5 & JavaScript)
http://gamesalad.com/ - Construct 3 (HTML5 & JavaScript)
https://www.construct.net/en
Art
2D
- The Gimp (PhotoShop alternative)
- Piskel https://www.piskelapp.com/
3D
- Blender creating 3D models
Art Assets
- TurboSquid
- Open Game Art
http://opengameart.org/
Audio
Sound Generators
- BeepBox
http://beepbox.co - BFXR
http://www.bfxr.net/ - DrPetter
http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html - Audacity (Sound File Editor)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Sound Assets
- Free Sound Project
http://www.freesound.org/
Production
Project Management
- Scrumwise
- Project file sharing
- Skydrive
http://office.live.com - Dropbox
http://www.dropbox.com
- Skydrive
- Source Code
- Team foundation Server
[free for teams of up to 5 developers]
http://tfs.visualstudio.com - Bit Bucket
http://www.bitbucket.org - Project Locker
http://wwwprojectlocker.com - Assembla
http://www.assemba.com
- Team foundation Server
- Screen Recording
- Chronolaspe (Time lapse Video)
- Fraps recording gameplay
- Resource Lists