The fourth annual MassDiGI Game Challenge officially has a winner.
With a prize pool worth $25,000 this event has attracted competitors from all over the US. Wooplex, an independent game studio from Worcester has won the Grand Prize and Indie Beta/Near Release category honors. In the world where the light is stolen Wooplex and his friends team up to save the day. Wooplex team consists of WPI graduate and Fulbright Fellow Oles Terletskyy, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv Ostap Hrytsyhsyn and artist Ihor Terletskyy.
Sharing the name with the studio Wooplex is a game based on a popular Ukrainian carton character Kapitoshka.
On the game the Wooplex team provided the comparison:
“Kapitoshka is a drop of autumn rain, everywhere he goes, flowers, grass and leaves start blooming. Meanwhile, young wolf thinks that every wolf should be angry and crafty, but he is not. While wolf is trying to fix this, Kapitoshka is making his best to make him kinder.”
The idea of how the world can become brighter and nicer by a drop of rain reflected on the game. Even though, we do not try to make Wooplex game copy of the cartoon, if you look closer at our game you can find something similar.
Visually Wooplex reminds Kapitoshka. They both have similar shape and drops flying around. When Wooplex is traveling everything he touches restores color and becomes alive again. World in Wooplex is going to be full of different flowers. By touching spoiled flowers Wooplex will fix them too.”
The MassDiGI Game Challenge is created to help new independent, start up and student game creators present and polish their ideas to make them into launchable products. Over 30 teams and students pitched their ideas to veterans from the game industry that functioned as speakers, mentors and judges.
The event is sponsored and supported by Microsoft, Greenberg Traurig, Disruptor Beam, Rockstar New England, Proletarat Inc, Thumbspire, MassTech’s Innovation Institute, Becker College, Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, BlueSnap, Nvidia, Vicarious Visions, Vivox and the ESA Foundation.
Wooplex recieved lots of goodies for being the Grand Prize and Category winner. Along with the 2,250 dollars prize they also got Greenberg Traurig legal services package, computer hardware, slot at MassDiGI’s PAX East demo table but most importantly customized mentoring and public relations/marketing packages. These will come a long way in helping the team perfect their skills and finish this creative game.
