The pupils, coming from Lochfield Primary School, were to select the best game – and, after thorough assessment, awarded first prize to ‘Pride of Lions’. The winning game allows players to impersonate a Paisley Lion and compete against other ‘Lions’ in a series of trails around various famous landmarks in Paisley.

Picture above: the winning team (BARDS) who produced the ‘Pride of Lions game’;  David Cavana – Lead Artist/Documentation, Ben Cunningham – Audio Designer, Sam Burrows – Lead Programmer, Ryan Duffy – Project Manager, Adam Dickinson – Level Designer/ Animator

It's a well-deserved first place for the BARDS team who put a lot of work into designing and developing the game. They went around Paisley to take pictures of the town’s famous landmarks and incorporated them into the game. They also created some amazing animated Lions, allowing the players to choose from over a dozen patterns for their animal of pride.

The winning team’s Lead Programmer, Sam Burrows, says:

It was really fun to take our game from the initial idea to completion, and we learned a lot in the process. Working as a team, we could each play to our strengths – in terms of creating graphics, animating, programming, and so on – to make the game as visually fleshed out and fun to play as we could.

Sam adds: "The task of making the game pertinent to Paisley 2021 was, for us, a useful stimulus for creating the core idea – a multiplayer game featuring the Lions inspired by the ‘Pride of Paisley’ art project – and it gave us focus in working on the various gameplay modes." He continues:

The day that the children of Lochfield Primary School came to play and rate our games was an exciting event for everybody there, as the culmination of this graded project for all three HNC classes. When we saw the kids’ enthusiasm for our game, we knew all our hard work had paid off.

‘West Brawlage Scotland’ game by team Peng Ting came in second place in the competition and ‘Goo Busters’ by team Unpaid Gamers in third place.

Picture above: the second place team (Peng Ting); Umar Akhtar – Paperwork, Programmer, Leo McFarlane – Audio, Programmer, Jamie McFarlane – Lead Artist, Animator, Joseph Murphy-Gray – Project Manager, Head Programmer, Paperwork, Ryan Watson – Lead Animator, Artist

Picture above: the third place team (Unpaid Gamers); Josh Lee – Programmer, Lauren Mason – Media, Conner Fleming – Programmer, Max Leca - Project Manager