Bafta Young Game Designers Competition 2020: Here's the full list of finalists

Bafta has announced the 53 finalists for its 10th anniversary of the Young Game Designers competition.

The YGD discovers, showcases and supports young people across Britain in their efforts to create their own game.

Finalists this year consist of children, aged 10-18, who have been working individually and collectively at school, coding clubs and at home to demonstrate their imagination in creating compelling games and designs.

Entries to the YGD tackles a diverse range of topics ranging from mental health, female empowerment, climate change and transgender rights.

Games have been created around these issues and those who have been shortlisted highlight the notion of games as an art form.

In addition to the award, winners will be given the chance to build on their game ideas through a mentoring scheme with leading figures in games.​

There are two categories, Game Concept and Game Making, which are split by two age brackets. Here are all the finalists.

Game Concept (ages 10-14)

Escape Castle (PS4/Xbox Switch) – Clio Pantelides and Lauren Yates, 14, London ​​

Escape Castle inspires the growth of lateral thinking skills via a team-building escape game.

Fantaji: If History Met Magic (PC/Nintendo/Playstation/Xbox) – Carla Kotter, Mia de Grammont, Amalia Sangiovanni Vincentelli, 12, Cambridge​

Complete quests, challenges, levels and more, to gain resources and save the world with magic.

Griffindeim (PS4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch) – Morayo Onyia, 12, Inverbervie

A game based on the nine worlds in Viking religion, where you can defeat and befriend giants and monsters.

Heirs To The Throne (PC) – Bailey Barnett and Thomas Reigner, 13, Allington

The adventure of a rebellious heir or heiress who strives to escape the restrictive lifestyle that comes with being the heir to a throne in the medieval era, whilst making decisions that changes their life and those around them.

Lunar Landing (Mobile & Tablet, PC, Console Alienware UFO) – Joshua Couchman, 14, Leybourne

Honouring the July 1969 Lunar Landing, where you take control of the module, as Neil Armstrong once did, and land it safely on the Moon.

Mall Brawl (Xbox and Playstation) – Tej Singh and Jake Franklin, 14, Leeds

This is a ragdoll physics carting game where you can smack other players out of their carts with your joust.

My Adventure (Mobile & Tablet) – Lucy Bee and Mahnoor Tanveer, 13, Tring

This is a game inspired by nature designed to show young people the world and its inhabitants, including the negative effects human activity can have on the world.

My Escape (PC) – Alex Castle and Daniel Purvis, 14, Banbury

Play as 14-year-old girl, Lola, whose parents are constantly arguing. She gets fed up with it and ends up falling down a hole in her back garden that takes her to an alternate reality, one where anything is possible.

Picture Perfect (Mobile & Tablet, PC) – Rowan Newington, 12, Ditton

A unique puzzle game where you control a pen with the amplitude of your voice to trace a variety of pictures.

Strung Up (PC) – Cameron Crosland, 14, Sheffield

A charming, somewhat challenging Metroidvania with a gripping story.

Game Concept (ages 15-18)

Code Story Dream (PC) - Eleeza Amin, 15, Hornchurch

An original animated choose-your-path adventure story, which teaches programming through the metaphor of magic and a magical world, and the player uses code to control their actions.

Dog Dash (Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox) – Celeste Herron, Eva Simpson, Lara Anne Herron, 16, 16, 18, Kilmarnock

An evil toaster has taken over and enslaved humans with high tech household appliances leaving the fate of humanity to an unlikely pair of family pets.

Fruit Frenzy (Mobile & Tablet) – Evie Sanger-Davies, 15, Grantham

A fun and fast-paced platform game where a group of fresh fruit tackle the challenges of infuriating insects and malicious mould to get to the checkout in the “gross-ery” store - against the clock of their best before dates.

Ghost Town (PC) – Sarah Bucksey, 17, Haywards Heath

Ghost town is a unique 2D puzzle platformer, exploring the ideas of coming to terms with losing a loved one through the perspective of a child.

Guiding Light (Xbox, PS4, Nintendo Switch) – Joe Straker, 17, Swanley

A puzzle game focusing on memory and coordination through darkness.

Heartstring (Xbox, PS4) – Eryn Preece, 18, Burgess Hill

Find your place in the world as a hat.

High Spirits (PC) – Matthew Swaffield, 19, Helsby

In the once-thriving city of Meteor, you play as a squad of 4 unique characters who are trying to eradicate the new supernatural infestation that has hit the city.

Inversion (Xbox) – Holly Lee, 15, Littlehampton

The world keeps turning upside down (in more ways than one), and two impoverished girls are the only ones who stand a chance of righting it for good.

Stageplay (Switch) – Dylan Hart, 18, Bedford

Entertain your audience by building a combo from combat and platforming challenges and by taking the more difficult branching paths in the level to earn a higher score, bad performance makes the levels appear as the stage and props they really are.

Suffering in Silence (PC) – Anthony Moran, 18, Luton

This is a stealth-based RPG that follows a socially anxious teen who goes out of his way to avoid social situations.

Game Making (ages 10-14)

Attack of The Evil Time-Travelling Vampire Giraffes of Utter Doom – Jessica Habgood and Elsie Habgood, 10 and 13, Sheffield

This is a 'wacky platform game' where you play a knight attempting to prevent giraffes rewriting history by jumping on their heads.

Beat The Tube – Max Staras, 12, Brighton

This is a game in which you design a vehicle to go over rough terrain and try to reach the end before a tube train gets there.

Complicated Co-operation – Alex Robinson, 13, London

Two players connected by an elastic cord have to make their way through 12 unique castles.

Dungeon Dash – Matthew Macallister, 14, Chippenham

A game in which you have to escape a perilous dungeon without being caught by the enemies.

Evolution – Andrew Ah-Weng, Caden Cheong, Iggy Gill-Ces, 13, Croydon and Exeter

A survival game where you play a gorilla running around collecting berries and food, but avoiding lions.

Hiro – Gustav Hills, 13, Exeter

A samurai warrior proving her superior sword fighting skills in a fantasy world inhabited by monsters from Japanese woodcuts, who has to survive kendo battles against Yūrei (Japanese ghosts).

Reverse Fishing – Alexandre Scheurer, 13, London

Instead of trying to catch the fish as the fisherman, you attempt to escape from Bob the fisherman as the fish.

Spring – Raphael Wreford, 13, London

This simple game can 'be played by both sighted and blind people' to try and catch the ball moving across the screen using spring jumping physics.

Starmada – Shaun Mugumbat, 13, Leicester

Fast-paced bullet-hell shooting action, which is themed around Space Invaders and Asteroids.

The Thrilling Saga of Towntown – Nathan Lecomte, 14, Hampshire

A 2D point-and-click adventure game with physics where you need to save the president of Towntown from an evil corporation who want to turn Towntown into a factory.

Game Making (ages 15-18)

10% – Jack Peck, 18, UK

Reduce the area of a map below 10% of its original area by slicing off sections fruit-ninja style without cutting off any moving cells.

Contramotion – Michael Ballantyne, 17, Oldham

A minimalist 2D platformer based around mirror images and bad puns.

Dungeon Up, Dungeon Down – Joe Castle and James Bodiam, 15, Sutton Valence

A top-down infinite dungeon crawler, except there are only two rooms you can move between that radically change whenever you enter them.

Family Dinner – Tom Hosford (they/them), 17, Camberley

This game tackles being a closeted transgender teenager at a family dinner, and all the awkwardness and upset that this entails.

Fey The Potion Maker, Sophia Shepherd, 18, Wimbledon

A fantasy-themed puzzle game where you draw magical connections between ingredients to brew potions in your abode among the clouds, with a family-focused story interwoven.

Millions of Minions, Matt Bull, 17, Orpington

A randomly generated dungeon crawler; your main weapon... living creatures that you can control.

The Platformer Project, Mathew Jenkins, 18, Clynderwen

An engaging, fast-paced, action-adventure game, filled with a wide variety of collectables and multiple abilities for you to discover across infinite realms.

Polyphase, Toby Hooper, 17, Redhill

A physics-based, puzzle-solving platformer with 'a unique mechanic' which allows you to 'phase' between objects as you work to complete each level.

Snakelaw Island, David McIntosh, 16, Chepstow

Traverse through an immersive story-based platformer as a duck trying to stop a war.

Trains of Thought, Louis Jackson, 17, Brighton and Hove

A game about navigating a non-Euclidian, physics-defying metro complex.​

How to watch the ceremony

The winners, selected by a jury of industry experts, will be revealed at the first-ever digital ceremony. This will be taking place online on Thursday, June 18 at 5 pm GMT and you will be able to watch it here, on Bafta's official YouTube channel.

The event will be hosted by Aofie Wilson, a prominent video game journalist, who is also the co-host of the BBC's new gaming podcast, This Game Changed My Life.

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