RIT continues to produce award-winning student games.
Student team wins grand prize at GameFest 2024 Mushroom Girl's Large Grass SwordIn this platform game, Mica, a small mushroom, embarks on a journey to acquire powerful weapons and rescue the inhabitants of a village captured by a giant bird. A demo version of the game is available on Steam, and a more complete version is currently in development.
GameFest, held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in April, is an annual showcase of student talent in game development. The competition brings together students from across New York State and the Northeast to show off their games. This year, 38 games were accepted.
“It's a more public event and there's a limited number of submissions to show off your game, so just participating is a small success,” said John Haley, a junior game design and development major who worked on the competition. Mushroom Girl's Large Grass Sword“Winning the Grand Prize is a dream come true. We've worked hard to make the game a professional and fulfilling experience and it's fantastic to have our efforts recognised.”
Ugly the Cat: Missiles and Mayhem has been selected as a finalist for GameFest 2024. The game, created by RIT students, was made for a production studio course using the PlayStation 5 development kit.
Three other RIT student games were named finalists for the 2024 competition.
how Mushroom Girl's Large Grass Sword growing up?
idea Mushroom Girl's Large Grass Sword It was born out of the Game Music Jam, hosted by Berklee College of Music in 2022. In this collaborative jam, game developers are given one week to create a game. A composer is then randomly assigned to each game and has a week to create music for it.
The prototype of this game is Morel's Swordwon the Game Music Jam. The original game creators included Haley, junior game design and development major Twig Sheheris, junior game design and development major Amanda Rowe, junior game design and development major Liam Armitage, junior game design and development major Dariel Ravelo Ramos, junior game design and development major Tyler Samay, junior game design and development major Ethan Lin, and compositions by Florida Tech's Andrew Ptashek and Berklee College of Music's Quinn Hauck.
In the game, the player will encounter the Grandmashroom who will lead him to a mysterious temple to obtain the Blade of Grass, a powerful weapon with the power to pull Mica up ledges and over dangerous obstacles. The player will control the sword which can move in a full 360 degrees in order to climb the obstacles and ledges found throughout the game.
“this is, Get through it with Bennett Foddy and The deepest sword“But it's become less anger-inducing and more focused on fun learning the mechanics,” Haley said.
In “Mushroom Kid's Big Grass Sword,” players must time their jumps and angle their blade to overcome challenges and traverse a mysterious world.
In 2023, the game was submitted and accepted into RIT's MAGIC Maker program, which provides students with funding, studio space, and mentoring support to manage their own digital media projects and prepare them for publication or investment. The team's goal was to have a completed demo by the end of the program, which won the grand prize at GameFest 2024.
“Mushroom Girl's Large Grass Sword “It's been a fascinating and rewarding experience learning what it takes to see a game through to completion,” said Haley. “Learning about the financial, marketing and publishing aspects of game development has been an interesting process, and I'm excited to do it alongside such a great team of people.”
The current core team of game creators wants to realize the full game and enter more contests, so they have launched a Kickstarter to support the creation of the full release of the game.
