After showing off gameplay videos of this year’s Search For A Star entries yesterday, we’ve got a hands-on option for you today – download the game projects onto your Win8 phones to play for yourself!

As part of both the Search For A Star and Rising Star competitions, students were required to develop and a game from a basic engine framework supplied by Marmalade. Once finished, they then published their game to the Microsoft Windows Phone Store where their project could be judged as a published product.

This year’s engine framework was based around a simple grid structure and some basic shape assets.

33 entrants across both strands of the contest are now having their finished technical projects checked over by our team of industry judges, where they will be thoroughly tested and assessed before the finalists are announced next Monday. Judging will be performed by an expert games development team including representatives from Exient, Boss Alien & Born Ready Games.

There’s been several high quality games developed this year, with some great designs, inventive mechanics and challenging gameplay – Have a go at them yourself :

Search For A Star 2014 : Game Downloads

Search For A Star 2014 games currently available for free on Microsoft Windows Phone Store:

“Muddle” by Fraser Tomison of Abertay University

“Search For A Star” by Harry Rose of Gamer Camp, Birmingham City University

“Star Smash Story” by Felix Jones of Kingston University

“Gemolution” by Milcho Milchev of the University of Hull

“Marple Match” by Shane Jennings of The University of York

“Planetoids” by Kevin Meergans of Sheffield Hallam University

“SFAS Saga!” by Ciro Durán of Goldsmiths, University of London

“AlienHeads” by Sam Parras of the University of Bristol (Rising Star)

“Face Blaster” by Tristan Bell of The University of Birmingham (Rising Star)

“Idempanel” by Sam Hosny of the University of Bristol (Rising Star)

“Rising Star” by Diede Apers of Howest, Belgium (Rising Star)

“Match And Draw” by Anton Georgiev of The University of Birmingham

“ConnectStar” by Ermano Arruda of The University of Birmingham (Rising Star)

“BlockHunter” by Gert Dhaenens of Howest, Belgium

2014 Finalists have been announced!
Find out which students have made it into Round 3!