There are 155 game studios in the Czech Republic. According to last year's estimate of the Association of Game Developers, the turnover of game companies in 2023 was CZK 7.6 billion, up year-on-year. A number of game titles developed in the Czech Republic have also achieved success abroad.
Students of the Open Computer Science programme at FEE can prepare for a career as top developers by choosing a relevant specialisation. Students of all FEE programmes as well as students from other faculties of CTU can apply for the Computer Games course, in which the competing titles were created. In the course, they will go through various aspects of game development - from creating a concept and design to programming game mechanisms and presenting it to experts. They also work with mentors from the professional sphere. The course is taught by Assoc. Jiří Bittner and Dr. David Sedláček from the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction at FEE.
"The jury agreed that this year again surpassed the previous years of the course in the number of complete games completed and ready for production. They appreciated the quality of the projects, the amount of work done on the graphic, audio and game content of the games, and the low error rate of the implementation," said Dr. Sedláček.
How to find lost memories?
The winning team focused on the theme of finding, or rather uncovering, the past - the four students spent a total of over 450 hours preparing and developing the game Recollect. "The game is about a character who has lost his memory and goes through the world trying to recover his memories. He does this by collecting different letters and through the information he learns more and more about his own past," described co-creator Jakub Sakař, a student in the Open Computing Master's programme.
"The game is designed for anyone who doesn't mind reading more than two lines of text, has some knowledge of English and is not afraid to solve sometimes a bit complicated puzzles," Sakař noted, adding that the team was inspired by games created in RPG maker, such as Omori or Yume Nikki. "The central gameplay mechanic of our game is typing spells on the keyboard. Using this, the player solves the puzzles found in Recollect," Sakar described. "By collecting the keys, the player is also revealing the names of the spells, similar to a game of hangman," he added.
As one example of the tasks for male and female players, Jakub Sakař mentioned moving stones that run onto the lander boards, which leads to opening doors needed for further progression. And this task also gave the team the most work, according to Sakarek. "It took us a lot of time to implement these mechanics, there were a lot of bugs that we had to solve," the student stated. The team plans to develop the game further. "We would like to finish it so that it has a complete story. At this stage, the game is not complete. It has an open ending, but it doesn't include the whole story we had planned," concluded the co-creator. You will soon be able to play Recollect on the website jetsy.itch.io/recollect.
Fighting the Blue Slime
The silver medal went to the game Blob, created by students Erik Šindelář, Michal Badinka, Jan Žoha and Adam Nejdl. "It's a pixel-art top-down roguelike game, which is a game where the player runs through a level, a cluster of rooms that he or she gradually knocks out," said Erik Šindelář, who is studying for a bachelor's degree in Open Computer Science.
"The main character is a blob, a red slimeball who absorbs power from a magical object, turns blue and gains the ability to control time. He got this from a hero who entered a dungeon and unhappily died. The Blob has taken his equipment from him and is trying to get away," described the game's co-creator. The creators said there are different types and amounts of enemies in the rooms. "The player has a sword, which he can use to wound enemies at close range, or a bow, which, when drawn, can in turn deliver blows from a distance. The bow needs arrows, which he can recharge when he delivers blows with the sword," said Šindelář.
"And the most interesting mechanic is the time mechanic, where the player, using the essence he consumes, can either activate a time rewind, where he goes back three seconds, or slow down time and can give faster blows. The goal of the game is that the player must get through the rooms as quickly as possible until the final one, where several waves of enemies are mixed in. If he beats them, he gets out," he summarized. And what was the most challenging part? According to the developers, clearly putting together the parts of the game they individually worked on and successfully merging the mechanics and design. Apparently, they succeeded. You can play the game now at jericho27.itch.io/blob
Minimalist strategy
Bronze goes to students Šimon Herrmann, Marek Jagoš, Vitor Tichý for their game Thronerise. "It's a minimalist strategy. You strategize to survive 15 nights. You build buildings, deploy soldiers, defend the city at night. And at the end, you get a boss who gets mad at you," Marek Jagoš, a student in the Open Computer Science program, described for the team. The team was inspired by the video game Thronefall.
"The most challenging part was the beginning. There is a lot of documentation in the course," Jagoš stated. "You get to try other things besides programming when you're looking for a game. There was also the design, which I took charge of. I started learning in new software. Even because it was a custom-made character, I had to use my animations, it blended together," another co-author, Simon Herrmann, a student in the Open Computer Science program, recalled later.
At the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction of the FEE CTU, the student game studio OI SIDE has been operating since 2022.
A photo gallery from the competition announcement can be found here: https://fel.cvut.cz/cs/aktualne/mediateka/36607-soutez-pocitacovych-her-studentskych-tymu-z-fel-cvut-2025
Samples of all the competing games are available via the following link: https://cent.felk.cvut.cz/courses/39HRY/archives/2024-2025
Photo: Petr Neugebauer
