The National STEM Video Game Challenge just announced the winners of the 4th annual challenge. They’re all middle and high school kids. There were nearly 4,000 entries in total. While only a handful won, the idea is to get kids thinking about STEM and practicing real skills in game development, writing, and programming, boosted by their love of video games as a medium.There are some interesting-sounding titles among the winners, to be sure: Gongbat, The Brink Walker, and Colorless stood out to me. And of course BLOB—all in caps—can’t help but intrigue. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to play any of these games, but hopefully their young creators will go on to do (more) great things, and maybe even make other games.

The STEM Challenge is presented by the Smithsonian Museum in partnership with E-Line Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Winners receive $1,000 in cash and educational and game design software.

For more information and a great play-by-play description of the celebration attended by the winners, check out this story by Allison Mishkin.


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Keezy is a gamer, illustrator, and designer. Her background is in teaching and tutoring kids from ages 9 to 19, and she's led workshops for young women in STEM. She is also holds a certificate in teaching English. Her first memory of gaming is when her dad taught her to play the first Warcraft when she was five. You can find her at Key of Zee and on Twitter @KeezyBees.