WN Game Finder Contest took place at the recent WN Conference Istanbul’24. Let’s take a look at the jury and winners in the main categories.
To Pixelia
WN Media Group usually organizes contests for game creators as part of broader developer showcases at its major conferences. Game Finder, a catalog for publishers and investors, selects a shortlist of the best projects, and then a jury chooses the winners.
Here are the experts who judged the dev contest at WN Conference Istanbul’24:
- Nick Phipps — senior game designer at Ubisoft Abu Dhabi;
- Austin Malcolm — senior brand manager at Saber Interactive;
- Gareth Brown — lead technical artist at Playstudios;
- Elena Morina — CEO and founder of publisher Ravenage;
- Tiziano Giardini — program director at Quickload Gaming Accelerator;
- Justin Burnham — managing director at 3D Realms.
So let’s talk about the winners.
Pixeduo Studios (run by solo developer Ömer Kaan Öztürk) won the Best Game Design award for life sim To Pixelia, where players can build their career, live their best life as gardeners, step into the world of politics, or even become criminals.
In the Best Art category, the winner was Project ST, a free-to-play multiplayer PvPvE third-person shooter from Spanish team The Breach Studios. One of its main features is the ability to activate a special Giant Mode to control a huge robot.
Leila, a point & click adventure game from Turkish developer Ubik Studios, became the winner in the Best Storytelling category. It features hand-drawn animations and puzzles with a heavy focus on the narrative.
As for the main category, To Pixelia won the Grand Prix award.
This time, the main sponsor of the WN Game Finder Contest was mobile developer JustMoby, whose main game Raft Survival: Ocean Nomad has over 100 million players.