Epic Games announces Make Something Unreal Live contest shortlist

Twelve teams will move on to the next round of Epic Games' Make Something Unreal Live 2013 competition, a European contest for game development students, the company announced today.

A panel of judges chose the shortlist of 12 from pitches sent in by a total of 21 teams. They sought a creative interpretation of the competition's theme, "Mendelian Inheritance: genetics and genomics," in ambitious games with a smartly managed development process.

"We look forward to seeing how those shortlisted evolve their concepts over the course of the competition," said Dr. Daniel Glaser, head of special projects at the Wellcome Trust, which supports the contest. "We want to inspire a new generation of games developers as part of our wider commitment to using games and gaming culture as a means of engaging people with science."

From here, the 12 teams will use Epic Games' Unreal Development Kit, the free version of the company's ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3, to build demos of their games on PC. They will present their work-in-progress games to the judges in early December, and four teams will be chosen for the grand finals, set for April 2013. The winning team will secure an Unreal Engine 4 license to distribute its game on PC.

Here are the 12 shortlisted games and their developers:

• Loch Ness (developer: Dead Shark Triplepunch; school: Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden)
• DN-ARK (developer: DN-ARK; school: Université Montpellier 3 Paul Valéry, France)
• Fat Totem (developer: Team Fat Totem; school: University of Abertay, Dundee)
• UGENE (developer: Frobot Studios; school: Staffordshire University)
• Regen (developer: Legendary Muffin; school: Anglia Ruskin University)
• Psych (developer: Ludorum Studios; school: Staffordshire University)
• Polymorph (developer: Team Polymorph; school: Staffordshire University)
• untitled game (developer: Stafford Uni Freshers; school: Staffordshire University)
• Mendel's Farm (developer: Static Games; school: Bournemouth University)
• Phenotype (developer: Team Catalyst; school: Northumbria & Newcastle University)
• Team Diploid (developer: Team Diploid; school: University of Abertay, Dundee)
• Beings (developer: Team Summit; school: University of Abertay, Dundee)