THREE pupils at Settlebeck School in Sedbergh have beaten off competition from hundreds of entries across the country to reach the top ten short list of the prestigious BAFTA Young Game Designers competition.

Matty Goad, 16, from Sedbergh, Finlay Miles, 13, and Reuben Kane, 14, both from Kendal, who all have Asperger’s syndrome, wowed the selection panel with their computer game Shaded.

Shaded introduces the player to characters with physical and mental health problems and through interacting with them life becomes richer and more colourful.

In the game, the player is ‘Naked Edgar’, a discarded sketch thrown away by his creator, a graphic designer.

The player takes Naked Edgar on a journey around the graphic designer’s drawing board, interacting with the features he discovers in a quest to add colour to his monochrome world. He needs to make friends and add colour to his life and stop being alone.

Finlay Miles, the author, said: “I am pleased, but really surprised we have done so well in the competition. None of us has done anything like this before.

“We were inspired to create this game because we all have social disorders and wanted to make people think about them – it was a bit self indulgent, but it became a really fun experience.”

“I like the end result – it is compact and smooth and tells the story of a simple character in a complex world.”

The game features characters like ‘Bi-Polar Bear’, ‘the Screamer’, who is frightened of everything, ‘Manic Panda’, ‘SAD Bat’, ‘Bulimic Dog’ and ‘OCD Squirrel’.

The artist Matty Goad said: “I was sitting there doodling and daydreaming and suddenly I started to draw the characters.

“I showed them Finn and he really liked them – so it all came together.

“It all happened really quickly, one minute I was drawing my little figures and the next we were in the BAFTA top ten.”

Shaded takes place over six levels, or worlds, which look very different and are based on items on the graphic designer’s desk.

The levels were designed by Reuben Kane and include Ink Blot Level, a shadow fluid land made of dark purple ink; string level, in which the characters climb through twisted and knotted balls of string and computer level, a maze with lots of dead ends full of viruses, circuitry and complex routes.

The boys will find out on November 21 if they have made the final three.

The winning team will be given the chance to spend a week working with professional game developers at Bright Light, the EA Games studio in Guildford and a playable version of the winning game will be developed by games boffins at Abertay University in Scotland.