IGM Student Project Finishes in Top 10 of National STEM Video Game Challenge

IGM is pleased to announce that Blocku finished in the top 10 of the Collegiate and Developer Prize Stream of the National STEM Video Game Challenge! This competition is targeted specifically for student and professional game developers to create educational games for K-4 students. The competition drew over 550 submissions, including entries by teams from Harvard, the Sea Research Foundation, and many others. Second year Game Design & Development student Matt Critelli was the author of the XNA version of the game that won the award. While sadly the game was not one of the 3 finalists selected by the White House, top 10 out of over 500 submissions is still impressive!

Blocku was originally created as part of the Humanitarian Open Source Software course which is offered collaboratively between the School of Interactive Games & Media and the RIT Center for Student Innovation. As a part of the course, several students develop educational games for the One Laptop Per Child Program’s XO laptop, and Blocku was written originally developed by Mark DeMayo, Ariel Zamparini, Ihudiya Ogburu and Fran Rogers. The original was picked up during the Fall 2010 offering of the course, and released for the XO in November by students Matt Critelli, Kai Ito and Lorin Petersen. Blocku was then rewritten in XNA for the STEM Challenge by Mr. Critelli. Mobile versions of Blocku are currently in development with releases intended for the summer.