Search for a Star 2018 competition starts September 11th with registration open now

On the eve of students returning to education, or in some cases starting their university courses, the student game development competition announces its 2018 dates.

Search for a Star 2018, run by Aardvark Swift through its Grads in Games initative, will start Monday, September 11th, but registration is open right now. The competition, returning for its ninth year, continues to improve year-on-year in entrant quality and entrants from 2017 have already found work in some of the top UK games studios.

Last year over 800 students registered to partake in the Search for a Star challenge for final year students and the Sumo Digital Rising Star competition for those university students not yet in their final year. Awards include interviews for exclusive jobs and internships with partnered studios.

Many game studios have supported Search for a Star in the past and have taken on competition entrants, Sumo Digital, Playground Games, d3t, Frontier Developments and nDreams, to name but a few, have all reaped the benefits of the exposure of talent the competition provides.

For this year, the competition is trying to become more accessible and is changing the knockout stage format it previously ran. Challenges will now be given to the students, meaning that both rounds one and two will be accessible for all entrants. Top entrants will be invited to the Finals Day Showcase Event after the January deadline has passed for the competition.

Registration is open now, which you can find at gradsingames.com/game-dev-challenges/. If you’re looking for inspiration from last year, you can find the list of 2017’s winning entries on the Aardvark Swift website.