Congratulations to Mo Abdulaziz from Brunel University London, our winner of the Game Design category in Search For A Star 2023!

This was our first year running a Game Design challenge in Search For A Star, so we were very pleased to see signups from 180 students at universities across the UK. Students were given a studio brief co-developed with our partners at 10:10 Games, and had 4 weeks to design a game mechanic with a prototype showing that mechanic working in a range of situations.

Mo absolutely smashed it at the project stage, earning the highest score of all the design submissions with their energy manipulation game mechanic (you can check out Mo’s project showcase below), and earned themselves a place in the SFAS Finals. At the final interview, Mo impressed the judges once again with an excellent combination of knowledge, skills and enthusiasm and became our first ever SFAS Design winner!

“This competition has really helped me to develop my skills. I feel so much like a designer now just because I had a chance to showcase my skills to industry professionals, as well as picking up a new skill & getting to showcase why I love design so much – I think it’s the most important thing!”

This year’s Search For A Star Design challenge was created by our studio partners at 10:10 Games, as a way of helping game design students to create a portfolio piece that showed exactly the type of skills that studios want to see from graduates starting a games career. Thank you also to our judging panel for the Design challenge, Arthur Parsons and Wil Evans from 10:10 Games, and Lawrie Brennan from Aardvark Swift.

After Mo’s interview, the judges shared with us the reasons behind their decision:

“The quality of Mo’s portfolio and project is outstanding. They have the ability to think about the hows and whys of a game mechanic being satisfying and this is an essential skill needed in their field. Their understanding of building games and the ability to clearly explain and present their ideas really made the quality shine through in their work.”

Congratulations once again to Mo, and we look forward to seeing a whole lot more from them in future 💚