Ellie announced as BAFTA Young Game Designers Awards finalist

Games, Animation & VFX Skills Diploma student Ellie Smith, has recently been announced as a finalist within this year's BAFTA Young Game Designers Awards.

Young Game Designers is an initiative by BAFTA that inspires and supports young people to create, develop and present their new game idea to the world.

Ellie's game concept, 'Escape the Engines' is a Steampunk escape room party game, with the only means of escape being through the players' abilities to communicate and work together before the time runs out. Players are placed in their own Steampunk stylised room, which they need to escape from before the time runs out.

However, these rooms interact with one another, meaning the players will need to communicate in real life and work together to solve challenging puzzles and beat the engines.

Ellie shared: “I’m so thrilled to be a finalist because it means I get to meet industry leaders and receive personal advice and guidance from experts.

“I decided to enter the competition because it was an opportunity to challenge my skills by considering key elements of game design and applying this to a game, which challenges peoples’ face-to-face communication/problem solving.

I love that there is so much freedom in terms of career options/lifestyle in games design and the fact that any outside knowledge, interests or random hobbies could transfer into a great idea for a game.

“In the future, I hope to continue developing my skills/knowledge so I can build my career in the industry and contribute to a variety of popular games.”

Find out more about the competition here