SFAS 2020 – Where are they now?
Search for a Star 2021 is well underway with over 1200 students registered to take part in Europe’s leading student-only GameDev challenge. As we eagerly await the first glimpses of this years’ projects this mini-series will explore the winners and finalists from 2020, take a look back at why they won and see what they do now.
This week we spoke with Matthew Lowe, SFAS 2020 Programming winner, creator of Zombie Outbreak and now Junior Programmer at d3t.
“Search for a Star was great fun! Competing against other students on a games course makes it that much more competitive too, which made it more exciting. “
Studying Computer Games Development at UCLAN, Matthew’s zombie defence game scored highly with the judges when it came to both creativity and features. His feedback included some great constructive comments from our assessment team of experienced programmers in addition to some great positive feedback;
“Impressive entry in the competition, with a variety of gameplay mechanics, supporting UI, and presentation. With some polish is approaching indie-level production quality.“
“A good, complete game. Good concept and good design and execution of game mechanics. Good use of third party assets, and pretty good visual quality. Tidy UI, and good controls. The leaderboard is a nice touch. Great work!“
“Nice game and good amount of polish. Good tutorial and challenging gameplay.“
“It’s an achievement which will be recognised every time I apply for a job, plus it gives you confidence that you can be good at your passion. And the prizes are a nice bonus!“
As a direct result of winning Search for a Star Matthew’s work got seen by the team at d3t (a Grads in Games partner studio). After successfully interviewing he is now working as a Junior Programmer in their studio.
With 2021’s cohort now working on their projects, what advice do you have?
“Make sure you have a solid idea, and don’t go overboard! Once you have a working game, you can add more features, this way you won’t be trying to polish the game one hour before the deadline.“
