Get help breaking into the industry with Search for a Star

Search For A Star is one of the industry’s biggest student game development challenges, designed to help you make the leap from student to professional games developer.
Students are tasked with creating their own games, art assets, animations or visual effects. Students who make it to the final round will have a chance to win an interview with a leading games development studio for a job role!
If you’re an undergraduate who is not yet in your final year of study, please see our companion challenge series providing access to internship placements with leading studios: Rising Star.
We work with leading studios across the industry to develop the challenges, designed to help you show the kind of knowledge and abilities that studios are looking for the most. It’s not just to test your skills but to also encourage you to create a piece of work that will make your portfolio shine.
The challenge contains five categories which you can enter: games programming, 3D character art, 3D environment art, 3D animation, and VFX. Each category has its own briefs and, where applicable, concept art donated by the industry.
Challenge Format
We want to prepare you for your future career; that’s why our challenge series has been split into components designed to have parallels to games industry recruitment .
Development Project
Programmers create their very own game which can be taken in any direction they see fit, while artists create game-ready assets to an industry brief.
Skills Assessment
A HackerRank C++ technical test for the programming category.
Panel Interview
The highest achieving students will be invited to our Finals Day Showcase Event to talk about their skills, knowledge and gamedev aspirations with a panel of industry experts.
Search For A Star Games Programming Finalist
Challenge Categories
Learn about each of our gamedev challenge categories and the type of projects you’ll be developing.
What’s in it for you?
- Winners get the chance to receive a job interview with leading game development studios
- Win big prizes donated by the industry, including games, software and gear!
- Develop a games project using a real brief and have your work seen by members of industry
- Build a portfolio piece based on what studios are looking for and improve skills with feedback from professionals in your field
- Experience interview panels with expert judges from the industry.
- Get your skills showcased in front of some of the industry’s leading games studios and make a big impression!