Art-mad teenage games designer wins a BAFTA

Fifteen-year-old Kesteven and Sleaford High School student Evie Sanger-Davies was named as a winner of he Young Games Designer award in the 15-18 years category for her new game concept.

Art-mad Evie said she heard about the prize through school and worked on it in her spare time during holidays last year.

The award is aimed at encouraging creative children and teenagers who may be budding designers in the growing UK games industry. There is a prize for the concept designers and one for those adept at building a game through coding.

The winners were announced via a live show on BAFTA’s Youtube channel on Thursday night after Evie made it through to the final shortlist a few weeks ago to be judged by a panel of some of the leading names in the games industry including Ubisoft and Playstation.

On being named the winner, Evie said she could not believe it having seen all the other brilliant entries. She said: “It was amazing. We screamed and hugged. This is an amazing stepping stone to an industry I would like to see myself working in. I am hoping it will open some doors to get to my dream job.”

Evie has had lots of messages from family and friends

Evie admitted she is no computer geek, rarely playing them except to pass a bit of time on her mobile phone. Instead she has had a passion for drawing and doodling ever since she was able to pick up a crayon, forever coming with with ideas.

“I would leave it to others to actually make the game happen,” she said.

Evie will benefit from mentoring by some of the industry’s biggest games design experts through the BAFTA prize and eventually she hopes to see her game become a reality - but she has lots of other ideas too.

She explained that her game idea, called Fruit Frenzy, came about while on a family holiday trip in a caravan on the east coast last summer. “Every time I went to eat a piece of fruit there were always wasps and fruit flies hanging around.

“It is a platform game where you have to pick items of fruit from the supermarket shelves and get them to the end of the check out without being attacked by wasps, fruit flies and mould along the way.

“The worst problem I had was having too many ideas and too many characters and I had to narrow it down to what the user would want to see and want to play and why they would want to play it.”

As part of her pitch for her entry, Evie spent hours writing out her concept ideas, outlined her target audience, age range, as well as summarising the game and what platform it would be designed for. She believed it would suit a mobile phone app.

She also drew layouts of the game levels, rewards, characters, features, as well as a larger image of one of the example characters.

Proud mum Rebecca said they have been blown away by Evie’s creativity: “She is doing fine art and graphic art GCSE. I cannot even draw a stick man! Gaming is one of the most dynamic, growth industries. To say she has won a BAFTA is amazing. It is very exciting for her to be put in touch with these leading players.