‘Astral Adventures’, a team of six recent graduates from the University of Westminster, have been selected to take part in the finals of the Tranzfuser Enterprise Pathway to turn their prototype gaming idea into a commercial business.
The Astral Adventures team consists of six recent Westminster graduates. Dariusz Piotrowski, Project Leader/Programmer; Jakub Sadowski, Programmer; Gazelle Sahabi, Programmer; and Daniel Eji, Programmer and 3D Artist who all studied on the Computer Games Development BSc Honours course; Antonio Shanti Berenguer from the Music: Production, Performance and Enterprise BA BMus course and Natalia Stoyanova from the Illustration and Visual Communication BA Honours course.
The team successfully applied to the competition through the Tranzfuser UK Games Fund for the Enterprise Pathway to start a studio in May 2021. The University of Westminster is virtually hosting them as one of the three accredited London Local Hubs, which are part of the Tranzfuser network. Tranzfuser aims to boost the UK’s future games development talent with the main focus of helping new teams come together and develop new gaming inventions as a learning journey. Tranzfuser supports team members who aspire to build a commercially sustainable studio or simply pursue a career as an employee or freelancer and want to use their project as evidence of their talent.
Astral Adventures was one of the 17 teams that was selected as part of the sixth annual Tranzfuser program to proceed to their dream of creating their own game studio. Their project, entitled “Jim’s Landing”, is a unique hybrid game which is working towards a new type of mechanics through different camera angles including third person and isometric environment. The game will divide into two unique worlds of adventure and defence with additional features such as gathering and crafting.
The team will work over the summer with the support of their appointed facilitator Alain Xalabarde, Product Manager at Zeptlab, who has many years of experience in game design for various AAA game projects such as ‘American Gods 4D’ and ‘Vermintide 2’. Alain is also one of the professional mentors who has supported Work-Based Learning (WBL) modules for the BSc Computer Games Development BSc Honours Course. The game MVP version is set to be launched on ProtoPlay TV in September 2021, during which the team will showcase their work to both professionals and the public and receive valuable comments.
Markos Mentzelopoulos, Course Leader for the Computer Games Development BSc Honours course and Westminster Tranzfuser Local Hub Coordinator, said: “Tranzfuser is a great experience for third year and recent graduate students as it gives them the opportunity to work directly with professionals from the games industry, have access on their network and utilise their learned skills to work as an indie task force within the industry framework. This is the second year that we participated as a hub and successfully supported one of our Westminster teams. We do hope over the next years to have more successful stories as this is an opportunity for cross-disciplinary work between creative industry courses.”
Dariusz Piotrowski, Astral Adventures Team Leader, said: “It has become my personal goal to form a strong team with a professional background that has the passion and motivation to create something spectacular that we and the University as a whole could be proud of. This experience and opportunity is something not many can be a part of and it makes me very proud that our team has been chosen to participate in the Tranzfuzer 2021 programme.”
Student Antonio Shanti Berenguer added: “I would like to express how grateful I am to be a part of this program. As a music production student with a keen interest in all aspects of audio for games, it is only natural that I would find myself aligned with this path. It is an honour to be collaborating with a team of talented, like minded individuals. I am also ecstatic to be contributing to this creative endeavour and extremely excited to see how it all fits together.”
Gazelle Sahabi added: “I joined the project because I wanted to challenge myself and develop games. I wanted to experience the full game development cycle with a team in a professional level and take part in the type of dedication and responsibility that requires.”
Find out more about the Tranzfuser 2021 competition.
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