2023 Young Game Designers: the winners

A dilapidated ruin, deep in the forest - where better to hone your archery skills?

You're a bird with a magic bow that allows you to teleport to the location of your arrows. With as little shots as possible, you need to manoeuvre your way through puzzling levels.

You are trapped inside a computer and there is only one way out.

The character must explore the circuitry of a computer they are trapped inside of and solve puzzles to work through the computer to a way out.

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.

Simple graphics but a 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.