Students in the Game Development and Design Program Shortlisted for Yugo BAFTA Student Awards

Sleep Cycle, a video game developed by Daniel Better, Marin Clark, Joey Genet, Xiaowen Huang, Jules Valle, and Harrison Ward while studying under Game Development and Design (GDAD) Professor Toprac, made the shortlist for the Yugo BAFTA Student Awards this summer. 

The Yugo BAFTA Student Awards highlights a select number of students who represent the most talented and innovative storytellers across the globe. “Team 3 Meat,” a team of six students led by Marin Clark, a senior at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies (AET), was among the top 10 percent of groups honored by making the shortlist. 

Released on December 8th, 2022, Sleep Cycle tells the story of a futuristic salaryman embarking on a dangerous journey with his stuffed teddy bear and is filled with “paw-some” puns left and right. The game is a result of Team 3 Meat’s work in Professor Toprac’s 2D Game Development Capstone Course, wherein students were taught crucial skills that were directly applied to the development of the game.  “With a rich storyline and stunning animation, it’s no wonder that Sleep Cycle made the BAFTA Awards shortlist,” Professor Toprac commented. 

Scrum master, programmer, designer, and character artist for Sleep Cycle, Clark stated that what she was most proud of was the fact that the game brought a “unique spin to the genre” through its ‘linking’ feature. In particular, she enjoyed getting to collaborate with a team made up of “ different backgrounds and majors,” which allowed her to learn from students in other departments, such as Computer Science and Radio-Television-Film. Thanks in part to her education at UT and experiences like this one, she will be working full-time as a Software Engineer at 2K upon graduation. 

Even more impressive is the fact that the Yugo Student BAFTA Awards just recently added the “Games and Immersive Content” category in 2021, making Team 3 Meat one of the first to receive this honor. 

Sleep Cycle can be played here and is one of the many amazing games that result from the work of UT’s Game Development and Design Program. As we kick off the fall semester, we look forward to sharing more information about the success of the UT GDAD Program as students begin building the next big games of the year.

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The Game Development and Design (GDAD) Program at the University of Texas at Austin is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program between the departments of Arts and Entertainment Technologies, Computer Science, and Radio-Television-Film. The program produces graduates ready to design, develop, and provide leadership for the exploding growth in game, metaverse applications, and creative media agencies and studios in Texas and around the world. For more information on the GDAD Program, please visit http://gamedev.utexas.edu.