Recently, the Human: Fall Flat University Game Level Design and Innovation Competition, hosted by No Brakes Games and co-hosted by Unity China and Curve Games, officially concluded. A team composed of students from the Game Innovation Fifth Studio of the Class of 2022 at our School of Game——Yu Yifei, Zhang Jie, Pan Dongjian, Cai Hanxi, and Dai Runyan——stood out with their work Steampunk Fantastic, winning the Excellence Award of the competition. The team not only secured a $10,000 prize but also had their work successfully selected into the official level library of Human: Fall Flat.
《Steampunk Fantastic》
It is reported that the competition attracted more than 1,000 students from major universities worldwide, with nearly 100 works received. Participants designed numerous levels with novel mechanisms and smooth gameplay for the classic game Human: Fall Flat around three themes——"Fantasy Epic", "Greek/Nordic Mythology", and "Steampunk Airship"——fully unleashing their imagination and creativity. This showcases the infinite potential of Generation Z in the field of game design.
The award-winning work Steampunk Fantastic by our students takes the steampunk airship as its theme, creating airships and floating islands filled with mechanical devices and gears. By integrating the warm-toned aesthetic style of dreamcore art, it constructs a retro, dreamy, fantastic, and warm exotic adventure world. Through the school's professional teaching, practical training, and innovation-entrepreneurship cultivation, the team drew on their accumulated practical experience and integrated classroom-learned technologies, level narrative design, and creative mechanisms. They designed innovative interactive gameplay elements such as transformable mechanical arms and gravity field devices. While preserving the "silly and cute" puzzle-solving style of Human: Fall Flat, the work adds industrial aesthetics and narrative depth.
Group Photo of the Steampunk Fantastic Production Team
The achievements of School of Game in our school in this University Game Level Design and Innovation Competition are practical outcomes of the school's consistent adherence to the educational characteristic of "integration of learning, research, and industry" and deepening of industry-education integration. They fully demonstrate the school's professional standards in game talent cultivation and practical creative capabilities. By constructing a talent training system integrating "art + technology + market", the school has established deep cooperative relationships with more than 50 industry-leading enterprises such as NetEase and Mihoyo, and jointly created a series of practical bases including the "Zulong Entertainment Game Training Platform", enabling students to exercise and enhance their skills in real-world projects, which ultimately contributed to the birth of the excellent work Steampunk Fantastic.
In the future, the school will further deepen industry-education integration, continuously promote the integrated and innovative development of "technology + art", deliver more composite high-quality talents with both artistic and technical expertise to the cultural and creative industry, and help boost the development of China's game industry.
