Gbanga game wins Universal competition

The Universal GameDev Challenge is run by Universal Games and Unity Technologies and sponsored by Intel and Microsoft. For the competition, which this year attracted just under 550 entries from around the world, developers had to create a computer game featuring five Universal brands. The winner was named as Zurich company Gbanga.

Gbanga’s game Voltron: Cubes of Olkarion is based on aspects of the Netflix series DreamWorks Voltron. The jury praised the prototype game’s immediate playability, its potential for expansion into a commercial product and its high levels of entertainment, according to a statement. As the winning entrant, Gbanga has won prize money of 150,000 dollars and a one-year consultancy contract with Universal.

“The Universal GameDev Challenge gave us the opportunity to work with a major blockbuster franchise. We are all big fans of Voltron Legendary Defender and the chance to pour our passion for this series into an exciting new game project was a dream come true,” commented Andreas Halter, games producer at Gbanga.

Gbanga was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Zurich. The company focuses on the development and sale of mixed reality games. Its flagship products include the Mafia-inspired Gbanga Famiglia, in which participants go head to head in bars and restaurants from the real world.