20 September 2022
Aspiring game developers at Southern River College in Gosnells have won a top award for their new game called Cyber Shock.
The group of Year 10 students created the game for the 2022 Australian STEM Video Game Challenge where they were named joint winners in the Year 9-12: Playable game – Open Category.
Southern River College students Soleil Oost, Lucy McClumpha and Isaac Pettersson.
Called Computer Nerds Corporation, the team included Isaac Pettersson, Lucy McClumpha and Soleil Oost and were the only Western Australian students to win this year.
Soleil worked on the marketing, character design and story, Lucy used her coding skills to bring the game to life, and Isaac made the game visually appealing and contributed to the game’s overall design.
'The process of creating the game taught me many skills, especially as someone who isn’t very experienced in game design and coding,' said Soleil.
Together with the help of their mentor and the school’s Head of Technology Rozmeri Cole, the trio tackled the competition theme of ‘networks’.
Cyber Shock is about a mysterious malicious artificial intelligence program which has taken over the system that runs the internet and is cutting off connections across the world.
Cyber Shock is about restoring the internet after an artificial intelligence takes over.
'We based our game around a computer system and played on the idea of game creation and the technology used to build games,' said Soleil.
Taking inspiration from 90s platform games including Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s up to the player to restore the internet.
Ms Cole said it was a great opportunity for the students to challenge themselves and apply all their varied skills to a competitive project.
'I am very proud of my students on such a great achievement. It still hasn’t sunk in yet,' said Ms Cole.
The national competition was developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research to increase interest and participation in science, technology, engineering and maths. The competition encourages students to step into the role of game developer, audio designer, composer, and storyteller to create their own game.
Along with the other winners, Computer Nerds Corporation will bring their game to the big stage at PAX Australia in Melbourne for everyone to play, and will be displayed alongside iconic game developers like Sony and Nintendo.