Inter-Collegiate Team Wins Best in Georgia Award                                        

Fruit 66 game recognized as best from Georgia game jam locations

ATLANTA (April 13, 2023) – An innovative driving game won the seventh annual Best in Georgia video game contest, open to teams from game jam locations across the state. This year’s winner, “Fruit 66,” came from team Chew Crew at the Georgia Tech location and included students from Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kennesaw State University, SCAD and Bradley University.

“The Fruit 66 team really stepped up to the challenge,” said James Simpson, CEO of Cellbloc Studios, who acted as the team’s mentor. “They did a great job building on the work they had done at the game jam, reenvisioning the game and creating a fun, original game in just a month.”

A panel of judges from the Georgia Game Developers Association selected the Fruit 66 team, led by GSU student Paul Hansa, due to the game’s innovative gameplay, strong team management, and the team’s plans to further develop the game. Fruit 66 beat out games from the game jam sites at Kennesaw State University, SCAD-Atlanta and SCAD-Savannah.

Now in its seventh year, the Best in Georgia competition analyzes games made at Game Jam locations around the state. Each game jam nominates one team to receive professional mentoring and to compete for the big title. The teams pair up with leading industry mentors to continue developing their games. One team is then chosen to receive thousands of dollars’ worth of professional service to help get its game to market.

"We have been extremely happy with the games that have won the Best in Georgia competition over the past few years,” said Andrew Greenberg, executive director of the association. “The award helps a small team finish its first game and take it to the game market."

The Georgia Game Developers Association is the nonprofit trade association of business and professionals for the video and game manufacturing industry of Georgia. It supports its members with business opportunities, educational services, professional development and public affairs coordination.

Follow Fruit 66 at https://twitter.com/chew_crew_games.

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the recent Global Game Jam. The Georgia locations each nominated teams and games for the GGDA's annual Best in Georgia competition. Each team is paired with industry mentors and have until the end of March to keep developing its game. At the end of the month, one team will be selected to receive thousands of dollars in professional services from Business Law Partners, Stites & Harbison, Vicarious PR and others to help it keep developing its game and get it into distribution.

Congratulations to our winner, Fruit 66!

The Best in Georgia Nominees

Georgia Tech, Fruit 66

KSU, Root Bear

Revit Online Jam, Sproot

SCAD-Atlanta, Slugfest

SCAD-Savannah, Overgrown

Watch our first looks at the games:

Root Bear https://youtu.be/z4Of0XMcYjY

Overgrown https://youtu.be/Rpg9D8GZG-Q

Root 66: https://youtu.be/2_QE49OZsIQ

Slugfest: https://youtu.be/Q73OxkrX1f8

Sproot: https://youtu.be/nXz_7AiC-us

The teams are working with their mentors to continue creating their games. We will announce the winner at our April 11 meeting. Thanks to our mentors - Alexander Fletcher with Transperfect Gaming Solutions, Dov Jacobson with GamesThatWork, Paisley Greer with Futurus, Chris Rickwood with Rickwood Music, Shaun Sheppard with Galore Interactive, and James Simpson with Cellbloc Studios.