The Guildhall at SMU Team Game Named IGF Student Showcase Winner
A game developed by a graduate team from The Guildhall at SMU is a winner in the first round of the 11th annual Independent Games Festival Student Showcase.
DALLAS (SMU) — A game developed by a graduate team from The Guildhall at SMU is a winner in the first round of the 11th annual Independent Games Festival Student Showcase.
 See The Color of Doom trailer  |
The Color of Doom was developed by Team Overscope as a single player action game over five months as a full conversion of Half-Life 2: Episode One.
Its creators describe The Color of Doom as an exciting, humorous experience shooting hordes of enemies! It brings the excitement of a 3-D action-platformed to a tongue-in-cheek superhero setting. Blast through a super-villain’s evil robot lair filled with aggressive red and blue robotic minions intent on your destruction. Only by using your color-switching gadgetry can you hope to survive the crazed contraptions left behind in Doctor Violet’s factory.
To see The Color of Doom and the Student Showcase games and game mods that will be considered for the 2009 Best Student Game Award, go to http://www.igf.com/02studentfinalists.html.
Team Overscope members are: Scott Huot, Quinn DelHoyo, Amos Hodge, John Morris, James Ketcham, Hemanshu Chhabra, David Nam, Robert Gee, Jordan Hirsh, Jeff Johnson, Keith Blackstone, Tanya Short, Stephen Khor, and Marisa Garza. They have since graduated from SMU and many are now working at game studios.
The 10 IGF Student Showcase game winners will go on to compete for an overall Best Student Game prize, to be awarded at the IGF Awards Ceremony on the evening of March 25th, 2009. All IGF finalist games will be exhibited at the IGF Pavilion at this year’s Game Developers Conference. GDC, Think Services' annual conference dedicated to the art, science and business of games, takes place March 23rd-27th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
The Guildhall at SMU has been honored several times before by IGF. Toybox Heroes, developed on a Half-Life 2 engine, was a 2008 IGF showcase winner at the Austin GDC. In 2007, Weekday Warrior, developed by Cut Corner Company Productions, also a Half-Life 2 conversion mod, won Best Single Player FPS Mod in the IGF competition. Also in 2007, Invalid Tangram, a 2D vertical shooter game, was an IGF Student Showcase winner.
About the Independent Games Festival
Think Services (producer of Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, and the Game Developers Conference) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers. They wanted to create an event similar to Sundance for independent game developers - and that's just what they have done with the Independent Games Festival, which has awarded hundred of thousands of dollars in cash prizes (and brought major exposure and a much higher profile) to a multitude of indie and student game developers who enter. More about the IGF.
About The Guildhall at SMU
The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University is the premier graduate video game education program in the US. Many of the school’s founders are industry icons, and classes are taught by industry veterans. In five years, the program has graduated over 250 students and alums have worked at more than 80 video game studios around the world, with several graduates now serving in leadership positions. SMU offers both a Master’s degree and a graduate Professional Certificate of Interactive Technology in Digital Game Development, with specializations in art creation, level design, and software development.
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