June 11, 2020

UPDATE: Resilience received the 2020 Games For Change Best Student Game Award on July 14, 2020.

Resilience, a new game created by Sungrazer Studio, a senior student team from the Digital Media Department, Music Industry Program, and College of Computing & Informatics (CCI), has been selected as a finalist for the 2020 Games For Change Awards in the Best Student Game category.

As a finalist, Resilience will be showcased at the 2020 Games For Change Virtual Festival and presented at the G4C Awards Ceremony on the evening of July 14th at 7:30 PM EDT. A nominee reel will be shown to highlight their game, and the winners in each of six award categories will be announced. The annual G4C Awards celebrate the year’s best games and XR experiences for social impact and learning. Out of over 200 game submissions, 22 were selected as finalists by a team of over 70 game developers, researchers, and players. For the first time, the Games For Change Festival is free for all participants. Register here.

Resilience is a sci-fi city-builder game that fosters empathy for displaced peoples and explores how resource distribution impacts wellbeing in refugee camps. In Resilience, players assume the role of refugee camp manager on a distant moon and are tasked with the livelihood of an alien race fleeing planetary disaster. Confront the day-to-day struggles of camp life and the structural problems of an underfunded aid system. Resilience was created as a senior capstone project and has been under development since September 2019 by multi-disciplinary collaborators across Drexel University. The Sungrazer Studio team previously placed 2nd in the Game Category in the 2020 College of Computing & Informatics Showcase Competition.

Sungrazer Studio is advised by Digital Media faculty member Tony Rowe, Jeff Salvage from CCI, and Amelia Hoover Green from the College of Arts & Sciences. The student team members include Game Design & Production majors Andrew Fairfull, Allex Gallegos, Ben Greaves, Jeho Lee, Sophia Nelson, Zachary Perry, and Tyler Sheehan; Animation & Visual Effects major Fiona Lynch; Music Industry majors Julie McLaughlin, Garry Wagner-Robertson, and Bibhav Pradhan; Custom Design major Lily Lauben; and CCI students Jake Carfagno, Aurora Lane, Chris McCole, Ashish Patel, Justin Roszko, and Tejas Shah.