Cogswell College Student Wins Best Horror Game Design Contest Held By Ares Magazine

Cogswell College, a leading educational institution offering a unique, project-based curriculum fusing Digital Art, Engineering and Entrepreneurship, has announced that one of its students was the winner of the Best Horror Game Design Award from Ares Magazine. A media vehicle for short stories in the fantasy and sci-fi genres, each issue of Ares Magazine is delivered to subscribers along with a new game.

Dalton Techmanski

Cogswell student Dalton Techmanski was the Best Horror Game Design Award winner. He, with Cogswell student Clark Bode assisting, won for his work on Techmanski's original tabletop board game: Affliction: Purity's Sorrow. The design behind Affliction is a one-or-more against-the-system engine in which players control a small band of heroes combating a pervasive evil army spreading affliction throughout the land. Regarding the game, Ares Magazine said, One design led the pack in our contest, with high scores in Originality, Completeness, and Fun -the game Affliction.' It also had the best art. We felt that Affliction' would work well as a folio, POD, or PDF game. Kudos to the winning designer, Dalton Techmanski!

Additionally, Cogswell students Christian Sasso and Deoel Noveno, equal contributors to their tabletop board game Cannibal, earned Honorable Mention in the contest. Said Ares Magazine, 'Cannibal' was the simplest game design we evaluated - and the artwork was cartoony in a good way. It is an enjoyable romp on an island populated by cannibals and human-stomping giants.

David Wessman, Cogswell College Faculty Member in the school's Game Design & Development Program, said, Game Design 1 is an introductory course intended to provide students with a solid foundation in basic game design skills. This includes developing a concept given specific goals and constraints, creating game mechanics and systems - the rules, as well as the physical systems design - the user interface / components, to produce a playable game that provides players with the desired aesthetic experience. The process is team-based and iterative, with lots of play-testing and feedback from classmates and the instructor.

He adds, Im always looking for appropriate contests that are open to student participation. This encourages students to think about their work as something more than just a classroom assignment. It is, in fact, part of their growing portfolio. It also tends to bring out their best efforts, because their games are being evaluated by professionals outside of the school environment. Success in this realm is a strong validation that the course structure and objectives are providing students with the knowledge and skills they need to enter the game industry.

What is particularly impressive about this achievement by Dalton Techmanski is that this particular contest represented a surprise shift in our course content. I had a different project in mind when I learned of the contest, but when I asked the class if they would be up to the challenge, the answer was unanimously positive - even though they would only have a little over two weeks to complete their games! The win for Affliction' is a testament to the hard work and creativity of our students, and their ability to deliver high quality, competitive products on a very tight schedule. Oh, and by the way, this was just the second of the four game projects they made in the class! Wessman concludes.

ABOUT THE ARES MAGAZINE CONTEST:

The Ares Magazine contest marked that magazine's first ever game design contest. Each of the games submitted were horror-themed games. The magazine judged the games using objective criteria, including factors such as originality, completeness, practicality and fun. Ares Magazine judges said, We were astounded by the quality of all of the designs that were submitted to us. We didn't know what to expect since this was our first contest, so we braced for the worst. We had a lot of fun running this contest - no doubt we'll be lining up another one soon. To read more about the Ares Magazine contest, please see: http://www.aresmagazine.com/?p=677

ABOUT COGSWELL COLLEGE:

Designed as a fiercely collaborative, living laboratory, Cogswell College is located in the heart of the legendary Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, California. The school is a WASC accredited, four-year institution of higher education with a specialized curriculum that fuses digital arts, audio technology, game design, engineering and entrepreneurship.

Numerous alumni of Cogswell College have secured prominent positions within the entertainment, videogame, technology, computer, animation, and motion graphics industries throughout California and beyond. Several of these alumni have established careers with such high profile companies as Activision, DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Electronic Arts, Pixar, and Microsoft Game Studio. Many other alumni have launched their own creative ventures.

Recent Cogswell alumni were members of the Academy Award-winning production teams which worked on the blockbuster films Frozen and Life of Pi. Some of the other well-known consumer projects to which Cogswell alumni have contributed include the feature films Madagascar, and The Avengers, and the popular videogames Modern Warfare 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and, Gears of War 3.

Additionally, animated short films conceived and produced by Cogswell students have gone on to win prestigious awards, including those presented by the California International Animation Festival, the Colorado Film Festival, the Oregon Film Festival, the Miami Film Festival, the Philadelphia Film & Animation Festival, the San Jose Short Film Festival, and Canada's International Film Festival.

Cogswell College is located at 1175 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale, California, 94089. For more information, please call

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