14 DAY TRIAL // YoYo Games, one of the biggest casual game encyclopedias, has announced its next major developer competition and has put up for grabs a prize of $1750, for anybody who is interested in creating a nice, original, casual game. The twist comes with the fact that you and even your grandma could basically create a YoYo Game, since the necessary tools and platform are provided for free and it is a really easy to use package. Anybody can submit a project until the 27th of April 2008.
"We're really very excited about the next competition. The originality and depth of gameplay achieved by the developers for the winter competition games demonstrates the power of GML as a language for online casual gaming, and suggests our community formula is already starting to pay off. We see this next competition as an opportunity for the community to flex their programming muscles," said Sandy Duncan, CEO of YoYo Games.
However, even though the game development kit is really easy to use, don't expect to enter an easy competition, since no less than 75,000 indie developers are registered with YoYo Games (with ages ranging from 8 to 80, according to the company) and more than 12,000 original games can be found on the official website. There you will find the free to download "Game Maker" which you can use in order to create your own video game.
Now, even though 1,5 thousand bucks would seem like pocket cash for any big game developer, it would be a great prize to win and the first place to start your gaming developer career. And this could become reality if you can use your imagination (we know you have it!) well and create the game you would like to play. Eventually, that's all that matters, not the cash: the experience a player gets when playing a game. Even if it's casual.