05 Jun Game on at Stony Brook

I get the coolest gigs.

I recently helped judge the Stony Brook University computer science department’s annual video game programming competition. Eleven teams spent the last six weeks first coming up with a concept and then building their projects from scratch.

The games ranged from word-based Tetris-ish concept to the ol’ Ninja-slice-and-dice.

Then there was “Charlie Sheen’s F’ed Up Adventure.” The idea is to have this little Charlie Sheen fight nurses, tigers and other assorted enemies with the goal of getting him over the rainbow. If you’re really good, you get a tiger blood power-up. When he jumps, the little guys shouts “winning!” The team tried tweeting Sheen, but he never got back to them. Go figure.

But, for the first time, there were co-winners in the competition. First place was shared by Twine Associates, for “TowerCraft,” its intricate Medieval tower protection game Tower Craft, and Virtual Void, which developed “Volume Revolution,” an innovative way to use music notes to break down barriers, literally, at least in game terms.

Twine Associate included Tom Ayalon, Joshua Belanic and Anthony Lomonaco.

The Virtual Void team was made up Louis Ahola, Daniel End, Nick Trombetta and Emily White.

The honors were well deserved.