The Great Canadian Appathon is a 48-hour national competition where small teams of students aim to design the next big mobile game to win $35,000 in cash and prizes.
It began Jan. 17 at Carleton and schools across Canada.
Students camped out at their respective universities to work on building their games for the weekend-long competition.
Colin Grey, member of Carleton team S1CKC1TY GAMING, said he’s done seven or eight similar competitions like the appathon, which usually happen twice a year.
“It gives you a really good opportunity to actually sit down and do something in a team environment where you have people encouraging you to actually do the work,” he said.
“Since first year of university at Carleton, I heard about different competitions through my program,” he said, which is interactive multimedia and design.
Grey said his team brushed up on coding and “whatever we plan on doing for the competition” to prepare.
They also took lots of snacks and money to camp out at Carleton’s hub, which was in an upstairs room of Herzberg Laboratories.
“I pretty much had just packed a giant bag of granola bars,” he said.
Whether or not a team will spend all 48 hours in the competition room will depend on the scope of their project, their stamina, “and how much caffeine you’ve had over the weekend,” he said with a laugh.
The top 25 teams at the competition will be announced Jan. 27 and the final winner Feb. 13.
Grey said, while the state of the room during a competiton may change from neat and orderly to a complete disaster, he will continue doing competitions and designing games.
“As a designer you’re never really done,” he said.
