Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Melbourne Indie Wins Qantas Award

Melbourne-based independent game developer Harry Lee has won the recent Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards. As part of his prize, Harry will win $5000 in cash, a 12-month mentorship opportunity with the digital agency SOAP Creative, and a trip to the South By Southwest music festival in Texas, USA, to attend the music festival and meet leaders in the interactive content and gaming field.

18 year old Harry Lee runs an independent games studio, Wanderlands and last year released Impasse, a difficult and different puzzle game. More recently, Lee made a mythology inspired platformer called Midas. Midas was awarded four gold medals.

An active member of Melbourne’s development and community, Lee is involved in many projects promoting play making and game literacy, as well as hosting many informal game jams. Last year, he formed The Underground Collective, a society of young game developers in Melbourne who occasionally meet up to discuss, critique, and learn from current game development practices.

You can check out Harry's work here.

There are four new categories in the SOYA awards this year, including Animation, Interactive Content and Gaming - both worth a look if you're an independent developer doing your own new and exciting stuff. Creative categories close every month, so if you're interested in participating (and winning) head over to the SOYA365 site now for more information.

The Interactive Content and Gaming category was only added to SOYA this year and they were flooded with entries. Since SOYA aims to further the career of young creatives, judges looked for entries that showed a developer taking the initiative to create original, thoughtful, and creative work with their own unique style.

You can play Impasse and Harry’s latest game, Midas over at Kongregate.

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