Achievements unlocked!
UCA games students win big

UCA student Dmitrii Kolchin has been named one of the country’s brightest and best talents in the games industry after winning a top prize at the prestigious Grads in Games awards.

16 Apr 2024

Dmitrii Kolchin, Maria Georgescu and Ben Clancy (L to R)

UCA student Dmitrii Kolchin has been named one of the country’s brightest and best talents in the games industry after winning a top prize at the prestigious Grads in Games awards.

Dmitrii, a second-year student in BSc (Hons) Games Development, was named a Rising Star in Games Programming at the awards in Sheffield – a prize which comes with a panel interview with a leading games development studio for all nominees, and fantastic exposure to industry leaders.

Also nominated in the Search for a Star component of the awards were Ben Clancy for Character Art and Maria Georgescu for Environment Art.

Dmitrii said: “For my submission, I used the code that was provided with the brief and turned it into a twin-stick shooter game, which is strongly referencing the Hotline Miami series. The trickiest thing about submission was that I could not use any existing engine, like Unreal or Unity. I had to write custom tools.

“I think I still have not fully comprehended that I have won this award! It feels very exhilarating. I hope this win can help me kick start my career after university – it will be a highlight in my CV.”

Dmitrii hopes to be able to forge a career with an AA or AAA games studio as a gameplay programmer. “The number one studio I want to work after university is Supermassive Games, since I like their projects, and there are not many studios nowadays that specialise in making horrors. But, in terms of some big-scope ambitions, I am thinking of starting my own studio in 10 to 15 years.”

What advice would he give to anyone thinking of studying games at UCA? “Make sure that you are really into it,” he said. “Developing games might be very challenging, but proper reasoning makes the tasks doable.”

Meanwhile, fellow Games Development student William Bashford and Games Arts student Alfie Manning have both won a SEGA Two Point Studio community competition, each taking home a $1,000 cash prize and a merchandise bundle. The ethos of Two Point Studio is fun and frivolous, and William’s “Cluster Computer” design for its Two Point Campus game was deemed the perfect fit for the Campus Items category, while Alfie’s “Whacky Inflatable Waving Tube Men” won the Student Items category.

Games Animation student Kitty Van Bokhoven (aka milkyKat) also featured among the winning entries for the contest, coming third in the campus items category and fourth in the seasonal items category.

Sophy Smith, Director of the School of Games and Creative Technology, said: “It’s fantastic to see students from our games courses putting their work out there and achieving the success and recognition they deserve, and this also highlights the value of being bold and entering external competitions!”

If you’re interested in studying games at UCA, head to our course pages. And if you’re interested in following the fortunes of the students featured here, you can check out their social pages:

• Dmitrii Kolchin
• Maria Georgescu
• Ben Clancy
• William Bashford
• Alfie Manning
• Kitty Van Bokhoven