Seed by All Seeing Eye wins Unreal’s Developing Beyond competition

The first Developing Beyond competition, hosted by Epic Games, has now come to a close. After whittling down competitors to a final three, which were revealed at Develop:Brighton last year, the overall winner has been awarded the $150k grand prize. All Seeing Eye and its VR game, Seed, which tasks the player with growing, crossbreeding and mutating plants, took the first place crown. Over the course of the competition, which continually funded successful participants to allow for full time development on the projects, the studios involved have now received $500k in prize money.

No one went home empty handed from the final, however, with the remaining two finalists receiving $50k and $30k. Lost Forest’s game Winter Hall was awarded second place and Untold Games’ Terramars took third. For all involved, the prize money will help them continue development on their projects and flesh them out into full games.

As part of the competition, the developers were teamed up with researchers by the Wellcome Trust. Together they were tasked to explore ways to transform science into a fun gameplay experience.

"This caps an incredible year for us,” says Ollie Lindsey, founder of All Seeing Eye. “It’s been a once in a lifetime opportunity, and to actually win is a dream come true. It means we now have the opportunity to focus solely on a game that we’re incredibly passionate about."

“The jury was unanimous in voting for Seed as the deserved winner of this year’s Developing Beyond,” says Epic’s European territory manager Mike Gamble. “All Seeing Eye have created a beautiful place to explore and spend time in, as well as delivering great gameplay and hitting all the scientific beats on right on the mark.

“The quality of all three games has been incredible and the decision to split second and third was agonising. All three games are more than good enough to be picked up, developed further and taken to market, where I’m sure they will all shine.”