DAVE School Students Nominated for Game Development Award

For four years now, it’s been a tradition among Orlando  
developers to gather in April to celebrate the city’s growing game  
industry. The event – Indienomicon’s fourth annual Indieversary – will  
showcase some of the best titles created in Central Florida, and  
highlight the people who made them happen. This year, two student  
groups from The DAVE School are among those nominated for awards  
because of the outstanding games they developed.

One of the games is the Star Wars-themed Imperial Missions, which  
challenges players to navigate a spacecraft through an asteroid field,  
collecting speed-boosting transmission rings along the way. The othjer  
nominated game is Sloki, an endless runner in which players run, jump,  
and slide in order to rescue the title character’s friends. Both games  
were developed by recent graduates of The DAVE School’s Game  
Production diploma program.

Instructor Jessica Kipikasha, who directed both projects, believes The  
DAVE School’s unique classroom experience contributed to the award  
nominations. “The production style of education that we offer at The  
DAVE School allows our students to develop game assets as though they  
are already employed at a game studio,” Kipikasha said.

Indienomicon’s fourth annual Indieversary event will take place at  
Oblivion Taproom on April 6 at 7:00pm.

Established in Orlando for more than 17 years, the DAVE School is  
located in Sound Stage 25, a three- story studio on the backlot of  
Universal Studios Florida. Among DAVE’s faculty and alumni are four  
Emmy Award winners: Tom Bremer, CSI; Rick Ramirez, HBO’s Banshee;  
Chris Jennings, Illicit: The Dark Trade and Matt Killian, Clive  
Barker’s The Thief of Always.