Search For A Star 2024 : Games Programming Winners
Looking back at this year’s winners in more detail, we hear what our industry judges thought of the Games Programming winners.
A huge thanks to all of the devs who took the time to sit on our judging panels and interview all of the finalists, and a well-earned congratulations to our winners this year!
Search For A Star & Rising Star are our annual gamedev challenges to help students create portfolio work to a professional brief, get direct industry feedback, and get noticed by games studios. You can learn more about the challenges here.
Grads In Games are only able to run Search For A Star due to the support of the games industry and by being able to help graduates into their first roles. We work to support many of these students for months both before and after the challenges, so if you represent a games studio & would like to learn more about working with any of our SFAS winners, finalists, or Ones To Watch, please get in touch with the grad desk here at Aardvark Swift as we’d love to tell you all about them!
Search For A Star 2024
Games Programming Winner
Tanapat Somrid
Abertay University
SFAS Games Programming Judging panel
Lizi Attwood, Technical Director at Furious Bee
Scott Bevin, Lead Programmer at 10:10 Games
Tom Whitcombe, Senior Programmer at Red Kite Games
Shani Owen, Graduate Recruiter at Aardvark Swift
“Tanapat is clear and confident, with a drive to succeed, great research and playtesting skills and a good understanding of problem solving.”
Tanapat’s submission for the project stage showed a lot of great code, smart thinking and efficient working — reaching the finals highlighted these qualities even further to our interview panel.
See Tanapat’s portfolio here: https://tanapats6.wixsite.com/tanapatsomrid
Rising Star 2024
Games Programming Winner
Dmitrii Kolchin
Rising Star Games Programming Judging panel
John Green, Graphics Programmer at CCP Games
Chris Haslehurst, Advanced Gameplay Programmer at Rocksteady Studios
Neil Bizzell, Director of Education at The Developer Academy
Adam Perry, Recruiter at Aardvark Swift
“Dmitrii is incredibly driven, motivated and committed to his projects. As a previous finalist, he’s taken the feedback from last year and really improved, showing excellent knowledge of C++ and game development techniques.”
After showing great technical knowledge and a strong prototype in the project stage, Dmitrii once again impressed in the final interview, especially with his clear determination to learn and grow based on the feedback received from when he was a Rising Star finalist last year.
