Pinoy-made digital games feted at dev fest

Several Philippine-made digital games were feted at the third Philippine Game Development Festival (PGDF) for their excellent overall visuals, graphics, design, and function.

 

The festival sponsored by the Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) featured digital games in various categories by top game developers.

 

“We want our game development industry to be as rich and vibrant as that in other countries. This festival is our way of showing how successful we can be,” said GDAP president Alvin Juban.

 

Among the games honored at the event were Streetfood Tycoon, Word Stack, Undead Fever, Puzzle Pets Adventure, Purefoods Tender Juicy Shop for Mommy, Innkeeper HD, Grav, and Noypi Nota.

 

Top Philippine game developer companies such as Kuyi Mobile, MochiBits, Anino Games, NuWorks Interactive Labs, Soupware, BL-ED, Zeenoh Games, Kongregate, Komikasi, and Armorgames, participated in the event.

 

Winners

 

Streetfood Tycoon by Kuyi Mobile won the Cultural Award and the Best Handheld/ Mobile Game. It was considered the number one strategy game in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Asia, and allows players to establish their own food cart and sell a variety of street food.

 

MochiBits’ Word Stack, a word association game where the player must group words that are synonyms, antonyms, or compound, received the Innovation Award.

 

Undead Fever and Puzzle Pets Adventure, produced by Anino Games, were honored as the Best PC/Mac Game and Best Browser-based Game, respectively.

 

Undead Fever is a time management game that focuses on putting the undead where they belong while making money for the funeral parlor while players can battle, collect, and raise pets with special powers in the match-3 puzzle role-playing game (RPG) Puzzle Pets Adventure.

 

Meanwhile, Purefoods Tender Juicy Shop for Mommy developed by NuWorks Interactive Labs, which lets mothers and children bond, won Best Advergame, being played 38,893 times with 4,720 installations and 2,460 registered users.

 

Because of the game’s popularity, it boosted 57,904 Likes on the Purefoods Tender Juicy fan page.  

 

Marvin Apacible bagged the Best Indie Game award for Innkeeper HD. The hotel management game, set on the island of Siquijor, aims to help a family run their business amid rumors about the aswang.

 

Bagging the Open Class award was Soupware’s Grav, a 2.5D platform game that revolves around gravity and solving puzzles.

 

Team BL-ED went home with the GameOn! Master Class award for Noypi Nota, which was inspired by rhythm-based games. GameOn Philippines is a game development competition that allows student teams to team up with industry veterans throughout the development stage.

 

This year’s PGDF, with the theme “The Power to Create, The Power to Rule,” was supported by the Department of Science and Technology—Information and Communications Technology Office (DOST-ICTO) and the University of the Philippines—Association for Computer Machinery (UP ACM).

 

GDAP also held a two-day event at the Department of Computer Science in the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

 

International and local speakers from GDAP member companies held conferences and workshops for students.

 

“The country’s game development industry is getting bigger and more complex. There are about 3,000 creative professionals in our local industry working for about 60 companies. This should have turned over an estimated US$70 million by end-2011 to early 2012. About five percent work on console game services while the rest are for mobile and social games, and the latter 15 percent does other services like game design consulting, and game community support,” said Juban. — TJD, GMA News