South Yorkshire 11-year-old boy nominated for a BAFTA

Leon Dudhill, 11, from Bolton Upon Dearne, heard about the BAFTA competition only a few weeks before the deadline and spent every available hour to complete his entry.

Leon has now been nominated as a finalist for the YGD Game Concept Award, which rewards the most original and best thought-out game idea.

Leon’s game ‘Trash’ is set in a landfill site, players take control of a living bag of trash that has the ability to manipulate all of the other items of rubbish that have been dumped.

Leon said, “Trash is a sandbox game with as few rules as possible, I want people to enjoy themselves however they want to and create their own game within it, without someone telling them how they have to play”.

Rather than a set route or objective to follow, Trash is a sandbox game where players do pretty much whatever they want to.

Players can build, craft new items, make minigames, or do whatever they want there are no rules.

Leon designed the game to be fun, relaxing and to help with mindfulness for people of any age.

Leon, who is home-schooled, has taught himself game design and to write code.

After the BAFTA ceremony, Leon intends to fully develop the game for PC and consoles.

This year’s ceremony is taking place on Thursday 22 June and will be hosted by multi-award nominated actor and comedian Inel Tomlinson.

BAFTA unveiled 44 talented finalists, aged between 10 and 18, who have been selected as part of this year’s BAFTA Young Game Designers (YGD) competition, which has been running since 2010.

This year’s finalists have entered for one of two awards up for grabs: the YGD Game Concept Award, which rewards the most original and best thought-out game idea, and the YGD Game Making Award, which goes to the most impressive use of coding skills on freely available software, to create a prototype game. Each award is split into two age groups: 10-14 years and 15-18 years.

Finalists were selected on the basis of the creativity of their vision and the technicality of their execution. Winning entries will be judged on their design and suitability for their chosen platform, with the aim of encouraging participants into games careers, and making the industry more accessible to young talent.