Glyndwr University games development students gear up to pitch their creations

Wrexham Glyndwr University has announced the return of its Games Talent Wales programme for 2022.

Founded in 2018 as a partnership between Glyndwr and the University of South Wales, the programme helps fund eight student games start up companies annually.

This year, there are five studios involved from North Wales, all of which are current or former students of Glyndwr, alongside three studios from South Wales.

Rich Hebblewhite, Senior Lecturer in Computing at Wrexham Glyndwr and co-founder of the programme has welcomed its return.

He said: “Games Talent Wales is a grass roots development programme and funded in partnership with Creative Wales which sees these student companies receive mentoring, pitch development skills, and a chance to then launch their game at one of the worlds biggest exhibition events.

“The idea is to help students to kickstart their career by establishing their own company where they receive £2,500 funding per team as they work towards the launch of their debut games.”

Students participating can take inspiration from one of their fellow entrants to this year’s programme, Silent Yeti.

The team were Wrexham Glyndwr’s entrants into Tranzfuser, the national game development competition, last year.

Although Silent Yeti missed out on the main prize, they have gone from strength to strength since.

He said: “Silent Yeti applied to Epic Games for one of their development grants which are not easy to get, but they were successful and got £30,000 grant to bolster their company.”

“This is a huge boost for them going forward and allows them team to double-down on the development of their latest game title, A Couple Of Cubes, as they look towards launching at our national showcase event in September.”

Also taking part in Games Talent Wales is this year’s Tranzfuser entrant from Wrexham Glyndwr, First Horizon Games. They have made the final of Tranzfuser with their game The Nutcracker, a hide and seek survival horror.

“Their game has some really interesting features such as linking in with local retailers,” said Rich.

“This means that the shops you see inside the fictional shopping mall within their game are in fact actual real life places in Wrexham and the surrounding region which is a strong selling point. I think they will be strong finalists.”

Ryan Roberts, team leader at First Horizon said: “We are looking forward to transitioning from a University team working on a project to a long term financially sustainable company in our own right.

“Tranzfuser gives us the tools and platform to make this transition. It will aid our confidence in pitching our game ideas going forward and give us valuable industry knowledge.”

This will be Wrexham Glyndwr’s sixth consecutive year as a regional Tranzfuser hub supporting students in this funded programme.

For more information about the BSc (Hons) Computing Degree at Wrexham Glyndwr University, please visit the website.