Student programmers from Scotland and Sweden have joined Colin Firth on the BAFTA roll of honour this year after winning a Dundee video games competition.
That Games Studio took the ones to watch BAFTA for their side-scrolling racing game Twang! on the Xbox 360.
Twang! was originally developed by the team for Abertay University’s Dare to be Digital contest last year.
Its three winners are all nominated for the BAFTA and the overall winner of the award was announced on Wednesday.
The team consisted of four students from Skovde University in Sweden Jocce Marklund, Annette Nielsen, Linus Nordgren and Marcus Heder and Thomas Finlay of Abertay University.
Held each summer, Dare to be Digital is the world’s leading competition for young people wanting to break into the games industry.
A documentary exploring the development of all games during the 10-week competition will air on Channel 4 next month.
“We are extremely amazed that we won the BAFTA ones to watch award. We can barely believe it,” said Thomas.
“It’s like a kick-start right into the industry, a confirmation that we’re doing something right.”
Academic director Dr Louis Natanson said, “That Game Studio produced an exceptional game that’s both incredibly fun to play and shows that these are young professionals with a very bright future ahead of them.
“The standard we expect each year at Dare to be Digital is incredibly high the student teams that come to Abertay University to build their games are among the most promising anywhere in the world.
“Previous Dare winners have gone on to jobs with the world’s leading computer games companies, including Rockstar, Sony and many, many others.
“We are absolutely sure that this year’s winners will follow in those trail-blazing footsteps…
“The computer games industry has huge growth potential worldwide, and students from Abertay and Dare to be Digital are the industry leaders of the future.”
The other two teams nominated for the BAFTA award were Team Tickle for their iPad game Sculpty and Angry Mango for their Windows Mobile game Mush.
Team Tickle consists of five Abertay University students Druhin Mukherjee, Fraser Littlejohn, James Long, Fabien Roussot and Ronan Suess.
Sculpty is now available for download on the Apple App Store.
Angry Mango consists of five students from the University of Wales, Newport Henry Hoffman, Matthew Dennis, Katharine Killick, Greg O’Brien and Ahmed Zaman.
Applications for Dare to be Digital this year are open until April 3.
Full entry details are available at www.daretobedigital.com/applications/how.php.
Photo used under Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user acme.