Search For A Star & Rising Star
Since our first event in 2010, we’ve been getting together every year with studios and leading professionals across the games industry to run our Search for a Star game development challenges, open to students across the UK and Europe.
Search for a Star & its companion challenge, Rising Star, are designed alongside leading studios and game developers to simulate aspects of games industry recruitment. Programming, design, 3D art, animation and VFX students are invited to show their skills & build their portfolio, creating technical game projects and polished game-ready assets — exactly what studios want to see examples of from graduate applicants.
Students can receive feedback on their development projects from games professionals, with high achievers invited to take part in an interview with industry leaders at our annual Finals Day & student conference.
Registration for the 2024 challenges is open now, and project briefs will be released in early November
Our core gamedev challenge.
Open to all students in their final year of study of a degree or studying at a postgraduate level.
You can choose a challenge option from programming, design, 3D environment art, 3D character art, animation or VFX
Challenges include a game/asset development project and a skills assessment.
Projects will be reviewed and assessed by games industry professionals.
The highest achieving students will be invited to a final interview with industry leaders.
Prize packages include hardware, software, games and merch from our partners.
Our companion gamedev challenge.
Open to all undergraduate students not yet in their final year of study, and also open to FE and college level students
Challenge options, content and assessments are the same as Search For A Star, but are assessed as a separate group.
The highest achieving students will be invited to a final interview with industry leaders.
Prize packages include hardware, software, games and merch from our partners.