A USC team containing many Viterbi School students won the Independent Games Festival prestigious “Next Great Mobile Game” award March 24 at the IGF Development conference in San Francisco.

Reflectors: (from left) Hersh Choksi, Keith Riley Co, Henry Liu, Jeff Magers, Abhinav Jain, Jeremy Jung.

Competing against  five other submissions, Team Reflection won based on audience response and reaction to their presentation.

Reflection is a Nintendo DS game built in the joint, year-long GamePipe/Interactive Media Final Game Projects course co-taught by Scott Easley (GamePipe), Chris Swain (Interactive Media), and Mike Zyda (GamePipe).

The game is a side-scroller that requires the game player to solve each level by moving their character forward using the upright character on the top screen and the reflection of that character on the bottom screen of the Nintendo DS. The Team Reflection website is here.

Members of Team Reflection include:

• Keith Riley Co: Director & Co-Creator - USC ‘09 Computer Science (Games)
• Hersh Choksi: Producer - USC ’09 Business Administration (Cinematic Arts)
• Jeremy Jung: Co-Creator and Designer - USC ‘08 Communications/Minor in Video Game Design & Management
• Henry Liu: Designer & Playtest Manager - USC ‘09 Interactive Entertainment/Business Administration
• Jeff Magers - USC ‘09 Computer Science (Games)
• Aadarsh Patel - USC ’10 Computer Science/Computer Engineering
• Noel Overkamp - USC ’10 Computer Science
• Gershom Payzer: In Game Artist - USC ’09 MS Computer Science
• Andrew Tio: Concept Artist - USC ‘09 Computer Engineering/Minor in Video Game Design & Management
• Abhinav Jain - USC '09 Computer Science/Minor in Video Game Programming
• Igor Nemirovksy: Composer - USC ’08 SMPTV Program
• Kenny Wood: Composer - USC ’09 SMPTV Program
• William Rahko: Sound Designer - USC '11 Music Industry
• Nathan McNamara - USC '09 Interactive Entertainment & English (Creative Writing)
   

A video demonstration of Fall semester’s version of Reflection is here.

The art of that game has been completely replaced and the game rewritten. It currently has six levels and provides some 60 minutes of game play. Team Reflection will post the latest video demo as soon as it is complete.

(Click on the image to read a March 31 story from the Daily Trojan)