Team of Computer Games graduates are awarded funding for impressive adventure game
A team of Computer Games graduates have been awarded a £20,000 grant for their successful submission into a UK game funding competition.
The team of graduates, under the name Chimera Tales, impressed judges from the Tranzfuser competition with their game “Hotel Arcanum”; a 2D adventure game about transgenerational Holocaust trauma.
The competition asks game developers to build a team, create a game concept and pitch the idea to industry experts. Chimera Tales wowed judges in the final showcase, awarding the team with the grant to fully develop their game.
Computer Games (Design) graduate Thomas Salgarella and member of Chimera Tales, is really proud of the team’s victory. He said: “To me, this award is special because from the start we believed in this project and we worked on it full time for months.
At the end of this competition, other professionals looked at our team and our project and said - Yes, this thing you are doing can go places, we want to support you - and that alone validated all those months of tough decisions, all the ups and downs.”
He added: “The feeling is just incredible. But we need to grab it tight and move forward because we are not done yet!
That's the other side of the coin: winning this award is a relief from a creative perspective because thanks to this we aren't forced to find another job and work on this only in our free time, but at the same time it is also a big career defining commitment. It's scary, but I think anything worth doing is scary at the beginning.
We are really proud of this victory which I think is a good reflection of each team member's individual skills, refined through our studies at GCU."
The team knew that entering the competition would provide them with excellent opportunities. They said: “Being able to work on a project you strongly believe in and make it advance to a point where you could start contacting publishers it's already a great motivator.
In fact, before even putting together the team we all knew about this competition and we were individually looking for ways to participate. Additionally, the great networking potential of such an event offers a whole community of experience and mentoring by bringing together teams from the entire UK (also from past editions of the competition).
On top of all of that, there is the financial aspect of this competition: you might win funds to sustain further the development of your project making it the first step of your future business."
You can keep up to date with Chimera Tales on their Twitter page
By Rachael McAlonan
Got a SCEBE or GSBS story? Email me at Rachael.McAlonan@gcu.ac.uk or connect with me on social media