Home team, 3in1, winner of the sixth Nordeus Hackathon

For the sixth consecutive year, Nordeus Hackathon has gathered talented developers and digital artists, this time at the Belgrade’s Startit Center. A total of eight teams from Serbia and Croatia were given the opportunity to express their creativity, teamwork and passion for creating video games, as well as to exchange knowledge and experience with mentors from Nordeus.

The theme of this year’s game jam was “Hack and Slash”, and the best teams won valuable prizes. However, the competitors believe that the greatest value of Nordeus Hackathon lies in the system of mentoring and supporting talents and the regional IT community, which was the focus of this year’s event.

Third place was won by the Croatian team Vanilla with the game Hack Fu Slash Fu, while a team from Serbia, Hellion, came in second with their game The Last Rubin. The jury and the audience were unanimous when it comes to the winner. 3 in 1, a team from Serbia, won both the first prize and the people’s choice award. Their title Future Gladiator Reality Show is a TV show in which you, the gladiator, achieve glory by slashing opponents.

“We were happy when we found out that we have been admitted to the Nordeus Hackathon because we applied last year and did not pass. Creating games is our hobby, and through these events, we can prove to ourselves what we are capable of, and show everyone what we do,” said Dimitrije Miković, the member of the winning team.

“24 hours is a long period, where initially you are super-creative, full of enthusiasm, but after a while, you become weary and start losing productivity. Tips from the mentors put us back on the right track, and helped us focus and solve a couple of details in order to complete the game, which in the end we also enjoyed playing,” he added.

According to the jury, all the teams have come prepared and mastered the theme, had a pretty good performance and managed to complete the game in a really short period.

“There were games that we found hard to believe were made in only 24 hours, but there were also some games with errors. Most of the teams presented the final product, which is the most important, because, among other things, it is a measure of the success of the Hackathon,” said Aleksandar Milosavljević, the developer at Nordeus, a jury member and a mentor at this year’s competition. “The teams generally worked independently, but we were most helpful for them at the time when they, due to weariness, needed a fresh pair of eyes to point out the obvious errors in the game.”

Both the game presentations and the award ceremony were open to the public and the visitors had the chance to meet the contestants and try out the games developed in the past 24 hours.

Photos from the sixth Nordeus Hackathon, as well as a live stream footage, are available on the Nordeus Hackathon Facebook page.