Two boys at Trinity School have made it into the finals of BAFTA’s Young Game Designer of the Year Awards.
Dungeon task: a screen grab from the Trinity pupils’ ‘Go For Gold’ game
It is the second year running that Sam Kingston and Sebastian Heitz have made it to the finals of these prestigious national awards organised by BAFTA – the British Academy for Film and Television Arts.
Their 2025 entry, “For the Gold” follows the same art style of their previous shortlisted project “RoboRogue”, but has very different mechanics.
Developed during Coding Club at the independent school in Shirley Park, Kingston and Heitz say that they have taken a novel approach to their gameplay, “where the player takes charge of an army and their goal is to vanquish opposing armies”.
Kingston said, “Submitting our game to BAFTA was a real challenge because of the time crunch. Our previous game, ‘RoboRogue’, took two years to develop, but we didn’t have that luxury this time.
“The idea for our new game – where you command a growing army in a dungeon – came while we were still working on ‘RoboRogue’, inspired by the indie game ‘Right Click to Necromance’. I built a prototype in Scratch, the only engine I knew, which made complex development tricky.
Meeting their deadline: Trinity pupils Sam Kingston and Sebastian Heitz found it tough to develop their latest game in less than one year
“I paused the project to finish ‘RoboRogue’, then didn’t touch it for months. Suddenly it was January, and I had two months until the BAFTA deadline. That realisation jolted me back into action. I faced tough decisions: abandon the project or go all in. I chose the latter, mapped out a plan, and got to work.
“Just a week in, I fell seriously ill, which lasted through the spring term. Despite that, I stuck to the schedule – with Seb helping on boss design and music – and we finished the game, pushing ourselves to the limit.
“When the email came from BAFTA confirming we’d made the finals with ‘For the Gold’, it was a massive relief. Many people thought this game surpassed ‘RoboRogue’, and it was great to see BAFTA agree.
“The final competition looks strong, and I’m looking forward to seeing who wins.”
The BAFTA judges’ announcement is expected on June 16.
It is not the first time that pupils from Trinity have shone at these specialist BAFTA awards: in 2022, Inside Croydon reported how Andrew Ah-Weng had won top prize for a second successive year.
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