4 students from ICAT Bangalore students dared to go digital

A group of four students from Bangalore have been selected to participate in Dare to be Digital, one of the world’s leading computer game design contests.

The competition is fully funded and sponsored by the Scottish government but is run by the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland. Fourteen teams – twelve from the United Kingdom, one from China and one from Sweden – will be their competitors.
The four students from Bangalore-based Image College of Arts, Animation and Technology (ICAT) are Kashyap Singha Phukan, the team leader of their group named FunBox, Arup Jyoti Das, Govardhan Gosavi and Zico Mahilary.

They have prepared the outline of a game called Ants – The Lost Memories, wherein the player is an ant who has lost its memory and needs to go about unlocking secrets to ultimately figure out who beat him up.

This game was selected by Dare to be Digital after the boys applied online for participation in the competition. Dare to be Digital then took a video conference with them during which they discussed each student’s plans for the game.

Kashyap and Goverdhan are involved in its programming, while Arup and Zico work on the design and the feel of the game.
“We talked a lot, showed them our slides, and told them what we intended to do with the game,” says Kashyap. The boys said that their game had been selected on the basis of market potential, innovation, and, of course, fun – because “if the game isn’t fun, no one will buy it,” says Kashyap. In the end, the winners will be decided on the basis of public opinion during the one day event in which all the contestants’ games are put out for public use and then voted on.

When asked if they were excited about spending three months in Scotland on the University campus with free lodging and 150 Pounds a week, designing the game they have planned out, they said, “We’re kind of excited…the real excitement will come when we get in to the top three teams which get to go for the BAFTA Video Games Awards!” The three lucky top teams will get to attend the BAFTA Awards and their game will compete for the “Ones to Watch” award.

FunBox is making progress with their game design. They say, “The ideas are always changing in the course of developing the game. You might get halfway through and then realise something doesn’t work; and you keep backups.” Nevertheless, the team seems to be growing and expanding on the idea of their game -- an ant’s adventures to retrieve its memories – targeted at young children.

Kashyap says: “We’re confident about the contest, but not overconfident.” The boys feel they don’t allow themselves to be overconfident as they have ensured that they are grounded.
Theirs is the first graduating batch of ICAT Bangalore, and Kashyap and Govardhan are college toppers. “It’s very nice to have such hardworking students getting the opportunity to show their skills. It’s very exciting especially since these are the first batch of students graduating from our Bangalore branch. Our Chennai branch is older, and their teams have gone for this competition twice before – but this is the first time our students have been selected,” says a senior teacher at the institution.