2023 Young Game Designers: ‘Game Concept’ finalists

Bounce Bat is an exciting 2D platformer game where you play as a character fighting to get back home and overcome their fears, explore the cave in an overworld setting or in set levels and undertake quests for rewards such bonus levels and extras.

You play as a flightless bat born with tiny wings who falls down into a cave system and gets lost. This happens after a series of events that occur after he runs from home, including being attacked by a giant bird. You explore the cave system and slowly unlock all the areas to escape the caves. There are boss battles, quests and optional levels. To complete the levels there is a launch mechanic where the character can launch themselves from spring plants and bounce off of walls. This is a core mechanic and is present in most of the levels. There are also powerups that are collected from different coloured flowers, these give the character new attacks and allow them to do specific things.

Astronauts stranded on an alternate reality world of their home planet, forced to explore and investigate the mysterious place and the monsters inhabiting it. They must solve the mysteries behind the world, how it exists and how to escape.

The game is a non violent, puzzle solving, mystery game. The player will start the game as the character Wendy, convinced that they have just crashed on their home planet. As the player explores the world, switching between the team of Wendy, Tony and Peter, they will slowly discover that the planet is not the astronauts home planet but instead an alternate reality of it. The player will also find many monsters that live their. The monsters will appear scary and to be avoided, but soon the player will learn that not all of them need to be feared and that the way to stop them is by helping them and solving problems for them. What will help the player help these monsters is when they realise that the monsters are creations by people’s fears and nightmares on their planet, and to help calm the monsters they need to fix the dream and make it less scary. The main mystery is how the astronauts came to the world, why does the world exist and how can they leave it.

This multiplayer game is a comical fighting game where the inflatable balloon men 'scrap' with each other in hopes to win the round, the fighting is very slapstick and centred around grappling/throwing other players.

This multiplayer game is a comical fighting game where the inflatable 'car-sales' balloon men fight-it-out to see who comes out on top. Although there is violence there is no gore as the animations are very slapstick and overly-dramatic. The mechanics of the fighting also work with a health bar and tends to focus more on grappling and throwing the opponent. Once this health bar is depleted the character will deflate and be out of the round.

An aspiring chef who accidentally cursed himself to transform into a beast each night refuses to give up on his dreams, and uses his newfound abilities to manage his restaurant in the day while foraging for resources at night.

‘Dicing With Destiny’ is a simulation/action-adventure hybrid where the main character, Caesar, manages his restaurant by completing orders and experimenting with ingredients to create dishes. However, the village is unaware that he transforms into a beast at night, which he uses to his advantage by foraging for resources.

All land on Earth has long since flooded completely, supplies are growing thin for survivors who made it to Mars, and there’s only one apprehensive woman who can restore planet Earth to its former glory and save humankind: Dr Rosemary MacNamara.

High Pressure is a first-person platformer about stress, the sea, and science. You play as Dr MacNamara, an intelligent but reluctant scientist sent on a journey deep into the bowels of her now-submerged home planet to find a rare, mutated plant known as the Vena Aqua, capable of drawing mass amounts of water out of its surroundings and converting it into breathable air, believed to be the key to restoring Earth’s landmass and allowing humans to return safely from Mars.

A fighting game that is single or multiplayer where you can soar through the skies in a flying pirate ship, fighting enemies with your crewmates and captain.

Pirate game where you are in a flying pirate ship in lower and higher atmospheres. In lower atmospheres, you are shot at by artillery that give endgame materials on destroying them. There are crafting stations that spawn in that can be used to craft any item but, while crafting, time outside is slowed by 50% and not stopped to keep you on your toes. Throughout the game, enemy pirate ships will attack but, upon destroying their ship, you gain materials, such as metal and wood, and all of the crew falls out with parachutes that you can choose to take prisoner for in game currency or some may volunteer to join your ship.

Returning to Ashwood to find a bleak shadow of their childhood home, the Seer must infiltrate the cult of un-life, unearth sinister secrets, and rediscover the history of Mythriel as they scour the battle-ruined realm searching for an old friend.

Shadows in Mythriel is a fantasy RPG in which you play as The Seer, a sorcerer who specialises in mind magic. Returning to the town of Ashwood to find your oldest friend missing and the town now bleak and lifeless, your new magic awakens. As you search the village for signs of your friend, you realise there is more to the mystery than meets the eye, and set out on a quest to find her. However, with all the secrets you discover on your journey, soon you won't be sure of anything...

As a well behaved child thrown into a pasta factory of chaos, will you be able to escape and possibly save some friends along the way?

A Comedy-Horror inspired game aiming to unsettle the player under a comical mask. The basis of this world: Naughty children are taken from their homes unknown to their parents; and as far as their parents are concerned, good riddance to those little brats. These children are then transported to a pasta factory, in which they are labelled different styles of pasta. Eventually these children-turned to pasta- are sent back to their parents for a nice Sunday lunch. Delicious. Enter You! The main character of this story.

You have been nothing but a gold star child, mistakenly taken from your home and transported to this factory. You are labelled and sent on your way through the factory works. You must escape the facility. On your attempts to find your way out, you meet with other children along the way. You may stop and talk to them if you wish and judge their moral compasses based on their actions an speech towards others, you may then decide to take them with you on your mission to escape.

Meet Violetha, a mushroom with unique abilities, taken by evil scientists. Help her escape their lab and return to her forest home in ‘Too Much Truffle’. Perfect for players who love puzzles, platformers and story-rich games!

In the game, you play as a small mushroom called Violetha, that has gotten captured by evil scientists who have been experimenting on Violetha with different mushroom extracts, imbuing her with magical powers causing her to become sentient and grow arms and legs. Upon becoming conscious to what was happening to her, she tries to escape the lab and free herself back to her forest home. however on the way, she must overcome puzzles, traps and defeat enemies.

The world is your canvas and you've got to defend it in this comic book come to life!

This game is an Action JRPG-like set on the very fantastical planet of… Earth! You play as Kunayo, a 16-year-old Japanese-Nigerian art student living in Lagos, Nigeria. The day after his 16th birthday(which happens to be the last day of school before the summer), he discovers that anything he draws on his tablet comes to life! Absolutely anything is possible, from swords to canons to exploding potatoes! However, life is not entirely sunshine and rainbows as he will soon discover that the country of Nigeria(and many more around the world) are under attack from enemies that appear to have come straight out of comic books! Kunayo now must go out of his way to use his art, the one thing that got him through the death of his parents(In the fictional Shinkansen crash of 2011) and use it to rid the world of these comic book-esque enemies.

This game is a storyline were cats have won the election for being more popular pet and has now taking over most of the world, and it's you, the player as a bird that you choose, will defeat all the cats.

It's a creative world were you can play as multiplayer with friends, collect new weapons, create bases and more. You always have something to do with side quests, defeat all the bosses from all different places.

Demons in Dreams is an immersive RPG set in a dream, where you fight Demons and Dream Monsters that have invaded the player’s head while balancing your happiness and fear so you don’t wake up!

Demons have invaded the dream world, where fluffies and mares have been competing over control of dreams forever. You have to work with fluffies and mares to defeat the demons, but fluffies and mares do not like working together. To progress, you fight demons, interact with mobs and the environment to get consumables and crafting materials for weapons and trinkets.

Third person, action adventure, set in a steampunk world.

"Enlightenment" mixes exploration with action and puzzles, the player will journey through ruins and towns to retrieve the ancient weapons to save their home town, with the help of Marcus' sister Arriety Star from an eldritch god dubbed "The Enlightenment" and its fanatical followers.

Embark on a journey of revenge with the power of the gods and the technology of the future.

You play as Orpheus, a robot created to play music perfectly. Exploring the dystopian city of Tartarus, Orpheus uses his many abilities to traverse it. Orpheus' main weapon is his sword, Aetherblade, used for striking enemies up close. The primary gameplay mechanic is an "Energy" system used to do special attacks. Energy is restored by hitting enemies with the sword.

Simple graphics but high speed “Boss Rush” style fighting game using polarity switching to block and attack enemies based on the periodic table of elements.

POLARITY has high action and simple graphics with a scientific theme. Its core gameplay concept is the ability to switch between polarities like those of a magnet. There is a positive and a negative pole which can be used to attack and defend. The Bosses you fight also have the ability to use these poles to attack you.

Let's say your opponent is using the positive pole to attack. You can use your positive shield to stop their attack from reaching you the same way two magnets with the same pole will push away from each other. When you use your shield you consume a stamina bar at the top right of your screen.

The bosses have blue vulnerable areas that have a negative polarity. Each boss is based on an element of the periodic table e.g. Tin would look like an old robot toy, Neon would look like a futuristic spaceship and Calcium would be a giant skeleton. The main goal is to beat the bosses one at a time moving up in the order of the atomic number of the element they represent. You will have beaten the game when there are no more bosses to fight.

A puzzle game with three difficulties increasing the complexity of the puzzle, set on a large puzzlebox which constantly changes, where a mysterious fox must try to leave the cube dimension before the 15 minute timer elapses and the dimension collapses!

Partially due to the clear and simple mechanics, Puzzlefox is unique, as with most puzzle games, you’ll find there are always over-complicated levels and checkpoints, however mine has just the puzzlebox, detailed and full of many secrets. You may think surely 15 minutes won't be long enough? However, due to its challenging difficulty, players are bound to lose several times, easily five or more, giving the game more length. While this may seem annoying, the puzzlebox will be designed so there are many ways to get everywhere, allowing for the players to experience lots of variety in content and not get bored as they discover new hidden shortcuts and items they previously missed. This allows for people to form great speedrunning tactics, and when the player retries after inevitably losing, they will manage to progress even further as they have built up strategies and remembered what they did previously, allowing for a very satisfying experience.

It’s weird, it’s crazy and it has soap themed super villains.

TBKJW follows the story of when the Black Knight (BK) adventures to a faraway island and gets caught up in a battle between two island tribes – GOOP and Soap. He’s on the hunt for the golden cookie, and soon he finds it. But before he can grab it the guardian GOOP KING and his army of cockroaches boot him off this island to the neighbouring slightly bigger Jelly island. BK uses jelly technology to create a clone, the Jelly Black Knight (JBK) to evade the tribes and escape with the golden cookie. The GOOP KING was created when some jelly and some soap were left out in the sun, turned into a gooey lump and was inhabited by a ghost, turning it sentient. He is plotting to put a virus on the island to turn it into a giant GOOP monster to rule the world.

While that is all happening, the Soap Squad, the soap themed super villains, also have a plot, to turn the island to a soapy paradise that would destroy all the jelly.

Can the Black Knight, with the help of his latest invention, the Jelly Black Knight, stop all this kerfuffle and steal the golden cookie?

This is a game where the player can see nothing on screen, and must use sound and vibration to escape from a series of mazes before they are eaten by a minotaur.

The player is deep underground in a dark labyrinth. Without any source of light – the screen would literally be completely black – the player must use their controller to move in the dark, relying on haptic vibrations from their device as they touch walls and navigate their way out of the maze.

You are trash, a living bag of trash who wakes up in a landfill site one day, in this sandbox game players have the freedom to do whatever they want within their world.

Trash is an open world game for players of all ages. Set in a landfill site, the player has their own sandbox to do whatever they want. Play as Trash, a living bag of rubbish, who uses the site as their own playground. Players have the freedom to play at their own pace and create their own rules.

Re-diversifying the natural world, one creature at a time.

Wild World is a constructive game, taking you on a journey into different biomes that need your help to rewild them. Plant the right seeds, create the right conditions, and be rewarded when a rare creature flourishes!