Teenage games designer up for a BAFTA award

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced the finalists in a nationwide competition to find the game designers of the future.

The Game Making Award is for those who have developed their coding skills and have submitted a prototype game made using freely available software.

Reaching the final for a second time is 15-year-old Jamie Buttenshaw for his game Tim’s Adventure.

Jamie said: “Tim’s Adventure is an open world role playing game where you play as Tim the Jelly Bean, and you’ve been set on a magical quest to save a land riddled with evil from the formidable Jelly Monster and its army of evil beans, by exploring the realm and duelling with evil beans.

“You use the ‘journal’ to follow quests which contains the objectives you have to complete to progress with the story-line of the game.

“I really developed my storytelling skills in making this game by thinking of the most interesting and enjoyable way for the player to uncover what is happening in the game, but still make them feel like that they are controlling the events.”

His mum Fiona added: “We couldn’t be more proud and happy for Jamie to have reached the finals. I love Jamie’s game - it’s so fun and I think his sense of humour really shines through.

“He really wanted to learn about all aspects of game making and I think his game shows an amazing range of skills, from creating his own game engine, composing his own music and creating his own artwork as well as writing the story.”

Prizes for the winner include: games, hardware, software licenses, tours of games studios and a mentor from the games industry to help develop their skills. A prototype of their game will also be created by a team of developers.