Recently, the NetEase 2023 National Game Design Competition came to an end after the national finals, in which students from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) made history. The "Stool Dragon Studio" from UNNC outperformed more than 100 teams, successfully excelled in the national finals and won the National Best Popularity Award.
Worth mentioning is that the “Stool Dragon Studio” team included team members from three faculties. Yufeng Lu, who is responsible for planning the game, is a student from the School of Education and English. Xinlei Wen, Shujun Jiang, Luhui Zhou, Fan Zhang, Jinyang Zhang, five students from Computer Science programme, developed the game. Another two students, Fucheng Jin from International Business and German and Haitian Liu from International Communications Studies, work in the team for marketing and business development.
The competition was organised by NetEase Games Thunder Fire. The NetEase National Game Design Competition attracts many teams every year and has great influence nationwide. Teams are required to create a game based on the theme of their work within a month. The judging panel will determine the final score based on core experience, technical implementation, artistic expression, and innovation of the game.
It is a big challenge for students to build a team, plan and design a game in such a short time. Luhui Zhou, a third year student of Computer Science mentioned that they even learned the game engine from scratch themselves. “We had learned Java and basic software engineering skills before in a third year’s module. When we got to know that we need to learn Unity, we were really excited. Thanks to Dr Boon Giin Lee, he gave us some suggestions in terms of the strategy of this game.”
Omni has two factors: jumping and solving puzzles. Gamers play a micro creature called Omni and solve problems by using the features of Omni. In the current version, Omni can use parts of its body to help its movements. Based on this feature, the team has made many interactive designs.