After meeting for the first time, 10 students decided to work together for the next 48 hours to create a fully interactive and downloadable video game. 

Jeremy Suh, an arts and entertainment senior, teamed up with fellow UT students Michelle Hoang, Rach Allen and Gage Benham, as well as Austin Community College students Franco Ramos, Riccardo Scaletti and Kiera Mckeon to create the award-winning video game “Prom: Paradise and Pandemonium.” 

The team developed the game for the annual Texas Game Jam on Sept. 27, where it won the award for Best Use of Theme and was the runner-up for Best Overall. Suh described the game as a two-player game set at a high school prom that requires players to navigate the party as a team to win prom king and queen. 

“We assumed a lot of other people would want to do a game related to dancing,” Suh said. “We really wanted to differentiate ourselves.”

The team believes “Prom: Paradise and Pandemonium” won because of their unique interpretation of the theme “it takes two to tango,” and because of the immersive environment its additional control panel generates. 

“(It’s not) a regular control scheme, you would have to figure it out on your own then come together with the other player,” Sun said. “Based on that, we decided it would be best set in a prom since (prom is) a little awkward.”

Creating the control panel required time, patience and a lot of software for animating and game engineering. The team created a dynamic audio system that changes as players progress.

“If you hit other people in the game, your music is going to change into a worse version (of the music),” said Scaletti. “If you’re doing really well, the music gets better.” 

Since their success, the team committed to collaborating on future projects. Ramos said the game jam served as a practice for bigger projects. The team is now developing a mini-games mobile app inspired by Nintendo’s “WarioWare.”

“It’s like we’re working out for a marathon,” said Ramos. “It’s a lot of little steps that get you ready for the main event.”