RIT Students’ Video Game Listed Among ‘20 Best’

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An iPad screenshot of Fade: Case of the Stolen Diamonds that can be played at Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on May 5.

Last month, the Slide to Play Website released the list of “20 Best iPhone and iPad games for 2012…So Far.” Fade: Case of the Stolen Diamonds made number seven on the list, beating out other popular competitors such as Words With Friends, Angry Birds Space and Run Roo Run.

Fade has been the work of a student project team at Rochester Institute of Technology led by undergraduates Daniel Sternfield and Benjamin Saxe since the 2011 Global Game Jam. At the event, sponsored by Albany chapter of the International Game Developers Association, a Fade prototype was created. Fade won All-Around Excellence, Excellence of Vision and Design Excellence. After the jam, Sternfield and Saxe decided to take Fade to the next level and have it published.

Fade is an innovative, interactive puzzle game in which users help Pete, the detective mouse, through different levels. The user cannot move Pete but can only fade-out the obstacles around him. It is only available on the iPad.

“I loved working on the project because I have such a passion for game making,” says Sternfield, fifth-year game design and development major. “It’s wonderful seeing such a positive response from media reviews and it’s so rewarding that people are enjoying our work.”

Both Sternfield and Saxe would like to see Fade become available to the iPhone as well as Android operating systems. Saxe has graduated from RIT and Sternfield plans to graduate this August and work full time at Zynga in San Francisco.

Sternfield is currently assisting on another project in the early design stages that is a more traditional game that involves a top-down dungeon crawler where the player can create unique spells as a magician.

Fade: Case of the Stolen Diamonds will available to play during Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on May 5, on the first floor of RIT’s Golisano Hall where there will be several iPads for use and monitors for easy viewing.