New Design Contest From YoYo Games

Game Maker community site YoYo Games has announced its second casual game development contest, with $1,750 in prizes for the winners.

Submissions to the contest must employ an "ancient civilizations" theme, but entrants may otherwise create any form of game they like. As the focus is on casual games, the contest website warns that judges will be looking for fun over epics, saying, "If you feel your game's strongest asset is its incredibly long and developed plot-line it will most likely not do well in this competition."

"We're very excited about the next competition," said YoYo Games CEO Sandy Duncan. "The originality and depth of gameplay achieved by the developers for the winter competition games demonstrates the power of GML (Game Maker Language) as a language for online casual gaming, and suggests our community formula is already starting to pay off. We see this next competition as an opportunity for the community to flex their programming muscles."

YoYo Games was launched in 2007 to offer support to the development of Game Maker, a GUI-based game development application meant to allow non-programmers to design and create their own games. The site's 75,000 registered users have created and uploaded over 12,000 games for play, discussion and review.

The "Ancient Civilizations Competition" is runs until April 27. More information, including contest rules and links to the Game Maker software, is available at www.yoyogames.com.