UGM students, once again, made an achievement at the national level. This time, UGM Creacle team won the first prize in the Mobile Games Developer War 2 competition hosted by Agate Studio and Nokia Indonesia with the game called Virtual Pet. They are students of Computer Science study program, Rifauddin Tsalitsy and Fauzan Sandy. The award is given on February 23rd, 2012 in Jakarta.
In this competition each developer is given challenges to compete to develop games that can be used for cell phones with mobile Java-based application. The participants were given time duration for 30 days to publicizing their game to the market. Later the winners were selected based on the most downloaded games by the user after it was released in the Nokia Store.
“We never thought this Virtual Pet would be chosen as the winner after successfully reaching the top downloads. In the early weeks of its publication, each day it was downloaded by up to 6-8 thousand users" said Rifauddin, Monday (27/2) at UGM.
"Creacle team became the first champion thanks to the Virtual Pet that has been downloaded by 153,840 users from around the world. The second position was for the Elventales Games developer of Surabaya with Sky Express application, with up to 100,526 downloads. The third place was achieved by Own Games game developer, Bandung, with Beyond the Well game applications that have been downloaded by 75,933 people.
Rifauddin said that Virtual Pet game they made is not so much developed in the gaming market. That becomes one of the factors that attract gamers to download this game. In addition, the type of game they developed is universal, which can be played by all ages and genders.
In the Virtual Pet game users are asked to keep a cat well. A number of treatments should be conducted in accordance with the specified time, such as feeding, sleeping, and other activities. If not, the cat will be sick and die.
"The Virtual Pet is actually similar to the Tamagotchi game, but in virtual form," he explained.
In this competition, Creacle team also made another game, namely Alay the Kite Runner. However, the game developed by the four students of Computer Science study program (Gatot Fajar S, M. Chaidir, Eko Nugraha, and Bagus Seto) has to be contented being placed in four position in the games competition.