2022 Young Game Designers: ‘Game Concept’ finalists

You have been employed as a tester for a revolutionary new sleeping pill. This pill helps patients sleep and guarantees them fantastic dreams, however, the dreams have begun to transform into nightmares and you must enter them and fix the error.

Kindly provided to you by Sleep Tight Co., there are eight dream realms to explore and save, with each realm having its own unique environment, quests, puzzles and characters. You and your small companion Pitxitxi (pi-chi-chi) are the last and only hope to save the dream realms from corruption by an unknown entity. After saving one realm, you may move onto the next by finding the Abyssal Keys. In some cases, these keys can be obtained by completing requests made by different NPCs, but beware, after eradicating the entity in the realm, who’s to say the entity will not follow you into the next realm… and the next.

Carrier Pigeon: World Tour is an arcade game about exploration, community, and delivering mail.

You will play as Lenny, a mail carrier pigeon from Seattle who, after having somewhat of an identity crisis, accepts a promotion from Local Mail Carrier to Worldwide Delivery Representative. This new adventure will take the player on a journey to not only 14 different locations around the world but also aims to take players on an emotional journey, accompanied by relaxing gameplay. As Lenny, the player will experience a wide range of cultures, climates, and people. The various villagers he will meet along his journey will teach him, and the player, valuable lessons about love, loss, and finding yourself.

A fantasy open world game where you explore, complete quests and uncover the secrets of the mindscape, a metaphorical plane that represents being trapped in your emotions.

Through a flashback, you find out that you woke up here a month ago with no memories and have since been trying to find a way to reclaim them. On your faithful steed, a large dog you befriended, you explore the land which is split into various biomes. During your exploration you meet other people, who like you, have no memories of how they got there. Completing quests for these people will help you to progress and unlock more items and upgrades. Mysteriously, with each completed quest, these people seemingly disappear, slowly unveil the mystery of the land, and eventually finding a way to defeat your character's own fears and negative emotions, freeing them from the world.

A Steampunk Escape Room Party Game, with the only means of escape being through the players' abilities to communicate and work together before the time runs out.

Players are placed in their own Steampunk stylised room, which they need to escape from before the time runs out. However, these rooms interact with one another, meaning the players will need to communicate in real life and work together to solve challenging puzzles and beat the engines.

Barry is a nervous working class worker, who lives in a small flat and is unsatisfied with his life; you are here to change that!

A detailed pixel art style game where you manage Barry's day-to-day life, in which you have comedic interactions with Barry, and watch as he does the same with NPCs. The game is very much about resource management (money, mental health, physical health) and interacting with an NPC enriched world to try and make the best life for Barry within a modern society.

Monster from the Maze is an atmospheric thriller puzzle game in which two sisters work together to find and save their missing parents from the Maze Monster's lair, whilst trying to not fall into the grasps of the monster themselves.

After a day of city exploration and conversations with their parents, neighbours and peers, the city is desolate and the atmosphere changes. The two sisters discover that their parents had been kidnapped in the middle of the night by a hideous monster who seemed to have been watching them. The two sisters begin their search to find their missing parents, exploring their city, completing a series of numerical puzzles and obtaining objects before uncovering the entrance of a dark maze.

You are an event co-ordinator who has been tasked, by rising stars, to design their events according to a budget, time restraints and special restrictions.

Investors will send you contracts describing what type of event they want you to set up. You will be given the option to accept or decline depending on whether you think you can achieve the goals with your resources. Each client event will have their own budget and special requirements, which will need to be considered carefully as you will also need to prepare the event within a time limit. If everything goes to plan, the investor will grant you fame, allowing for greater stars and bigger companies to hire you, and to increase your respect level; meaning that your employer will be more keen to send you more contracts and give you a higher budget or less restrictions.

Control a small green slime, who has the ability to possess other creatures, to solve puzzles and get through levels in a pixel 2D platformer.

Set in a fantasy medieval castle, the player must possess other creatures to absorb their abilities. These new abilities can then be utilised to help solve puzzles and make their way to the end of each level. The slime must escape the castle and head to the freedom of the local cave system, without being caught by the court wizard, their creator, and avoiding any local adventurers looking for a low-level encounter. The game is split into six stages, which each have 15 levels. Each stage has a different background theme, and different characters to possess.

Explore the Everglades to prove your theory of there being a lost civilization hidden in the middle of the subtropical wilderness.

After following the trail of evidence throughout the Everglades, the explorer is led to a half-sunken temple and realises that this civilization can’t be long gone after all. Your goal is to find out what happened to the civilization by exploring the Everglades many environments and solving puzzles through a combination of platforming and problem-solving. It combines elements of a classic 2D platformer game with puzzles that can be solved by observing the nearby environment and paying attention to previous information. You uncover the plot as you go on, learning more about not just the ancient civilization, but also the backstory of the mysterious explorer you play as.

Trapped in a constantly changing library maze, with only chance of freedom being in the hands of the book characters.

A mystery themed game set in an ‘abandoned’ library, in which the player must complete all quests set by book characters and find a special book called ‘The Curses of Mallory’, to escape. These characters can be found in specific books scattered across the library as the player explores, however, the maze changes every five minutes altering the pathways through the library halls.

An engaging fantasy story game that weaves through a subconscious world of the main character's biggest insecurities while she tackles to discover the true meaning of the realm.

You are accompanied by a mythical creature who aids you in finding your way through the 3D open world. Every character interaction and decision you make takes you on different paths of the story, as you unlock new powers to enhance your playthrough experience and manipulate the world around you.

Investigate the Cattaluna Castle as a sword wielding magical cat, defeating bosses and an evil monarchy.

A pixel art style, RPG Dungeon Crawler where the player enters a castle at night; exploring the grounds, avoiding guards, finding supplies and defeating bosses. During the day, the player is unable to venture into the castle and can instead explore the surrounding town to buy gear for the next night's escapade. The player will reach dead ends in the castle that can’t be resolved until the next night. During this time, the player will have to search for things in the town that will unlock new explorable areas in the castle.

EcoWarriors join a four man specialist team to save the planet from destruction, removing the root cause, by rescuing the world from seas of plastic, withered forests and dirty water.

A hand-drawn 8 bit style 2D multiplayer, which allows players to discover and explore an extravagant world which soon uproars into flames with complex monsters and bosses. With a variety of characters to select from, each character has unique abilities and traits; some having melee, short-ranged weapons whilst others will have ranged, long-ranged weapons which will rely on the player adapting to a specific playstyle. Each levels will have a different but mesmerising atmosphere, settings and sounds which will make players feel emersed in the game.

Escape each desolate laboratory room by solving challenging puzzles, using your character's ability to alter gravity.

You are challenged to venture through the 3D world. The goal of the game is to get through the doors of each level to escape the rooms. You can walk on walls, however, changes in gravity causes boxes to fall and the environment around you to change.

Explore the Super Babies Universe, saving your friends from the Bad Guys and Pup City from the Darkness.

Play as one of 12 Super Babies, who were once ordinary babies but have now gained super powers and abilities in multiple different ways. Meanwhile, on Bad Guy island, the Bad Guys scheming their take over. Bad Guy Island has been split into eleven parts, and you must join it back together by completing multiple platformer stages, fighting Bad Guy bosses and rescuing your fellow Super Babies and unlocking new powers.

A journey to retrieve the Lost Crystal Shards to save worlds Gaia and Terra from eternal darkness.

Set in a world shrouded in eternal darkness. You play as a mage named Dawn who has lost her memory. Dawn was once one of the Mages of the World's Order, a class of mages who keep the magic of their world, Gaia, in order. Dawn was falsely accused of wreaking havoc with magic in another world and now faces a bleak future, as the magic in both worlds are thrown out of balance.

After getting sucked into a computer when clicking on a scam link, Sam has to defeat the viruses and beat the hacker to escape and go back home.

To escape the computer, the player must go on a journey through the virus world, collecting coins on the way, until they eventually defeat the hacker. The levels increase in difficulty as you progress, but the coins collected on the way can be used to buy better weapons, upgrades and power ups throughout the journey.

An urban dystopian themed pixelated picross puzzle game, where you illuminate the past and the path to the truth.

In this game, you play as a girl in a dark sub urban dystopia, who lights up the ruins of a house by using the light of your matches in a nonogram/picross puzzle. Deciphering these puzzles will pave the path to the truth and the identity of you yourself. The hope and goals for this game is not only to give the player the challenging experience of solving nonogram puzzlers, but to spread awareness of those fighting diseases.

Knock out all your foes with a deadly umbrella as you complete more levels to unlock different rare umbrellas.

You play as a brave cloud boy, who uses his great great grandpa's magical umbrella to fulfill his dream of chasing the end of the rainbow. Your in game goal is to try and avoid the obstacles, but the longer you survive the faster the obstacles pop up making it harder reach the rainbow.

A game set in the psyche of the player’s mind, where overcoming phobia centred nightmares helps the player to wake up feeling at peace.

You are in a 3D virtual reality dreamscape, facing a corridor with five brightly lit portals each containing a different phobia to overcome, with different atmosphere and sound effects relative to each level. As you successfully complete all five phobia based challenges, your confidence bar will grow as the anxiety bar diminishes, ending the game with a happy dream before you wake up.