BAFTA Ones To Watch - Boro Toro

BAFTA Ones to Watch Award

10 March 09

As well as celebrating the very best in the video games, BAFTA strives to champion and nurture new talent within the industry.

The BAFTA Ones to Watch Award was created to encourage and reward innovation from emerging games designers.

Each year Dare to be Digital run a video games development competition to select the Award nominations.

Teams of five art and science students/recent graduates are filtered through a rigorous industry selection process to work together for ten weeks from June to August. Three winning games are presented with cash prizes and go forward to form the shortlist for the BAFTA Ones to Watch Award.

The three shortlisted teams are then given a number of weeks to address the panel's comments and produce a final version of their game which combines best use of technology, market potential and innovation.

Now in it’s third year the Ones to Watch Award is presented annually at the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards.

The Award in 2010

This year’s Dare to be Digital winners were announced at Dare ProtoPlay at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The top three teams - as chosen by a panel made up of some of the top names in the computer gaming industry including representation from BAFTA, BBC, Blitz Games Studios, Cohort, Denki, Disney, Ninja Theory, Rare, Realtime Worlds, Rockstar North, Sony and Turner Broadcasting - were The Butterflyers, Gentlemen of Fortune and Pixel Pirates.

BAFTA judge Andy Nuttall who sits on BAFTA's Video Games committee said: "I was impressed with the level of quality at this year's Dare Protoplay, which just keeps on getting better. Each team showed determination to impress both through their games and their pitches, with plenty of originality and technical achievement on show."

• Find out more at www.daretobedigital.com

The Butterflyers, whose game SHRuNK! sees the player reduced to the size of a salt shaker as they battle against Dr Shockalot to rescue the Kleinoscope - a device which reduces the world around you at will - also won the Dare Teams choice award.

• Find out more

Gentlemen of Fortune were also amongst the winners for their physics based action-stealth game Quick as Thieves, in which the player is challenged to navigate round their way around a museum at night to steal the valuable 'Macguffin'. The more items the player can steal the greater their abilities. However, get greedy and there is a greater chance of being caught.

• Find out more

Pixel Pirates were winners for their 3D platform, puzzle-based game Colour Coded which utilises Wacom graphics tablets.

• Find out more

Previous Winners

The winner of the BAFTA Ones to Watch Award in association with Dare to be Digital in 2009 was Boro-Toro – a side scrolling platform puzzle game utilising Wii technology – from DarkMatter Designs

• The Ones to Watch Award in 2009
• The Ones to Watch Award in 2007

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