A still from the video game Flash Frozen.

Flash Frozen, a video game developed by a class of a dozen UW-Stout game design and development students, was declared national co-champion at the Entertainment Software Association’s E3 conference in Los Angeles on June 13. Sixty games from schools across the country were entered into the College Game Competition, which was judged by some of the world’s leading game design professionals at the expo, the premier event in the video and computer gaming industry. The UW-Stout entry tied with Lost In Thought, which was created by students from the Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design. Flash Frozen, which was created in Stout’s Senior 3D Game Design class, is described as a survival horror game in which players must endure dangerous environments and freezing temperatures while trying to escape a broken-down ship. Oh, and did we mention ship is haunted? (To learn more about the game and to check out a trailer, visit flashfrozengame.com.) The expo gave the 12 students and two professors who created Flash Frozen an opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the bigwigs in the industry and to meet the next generation of gaming superstars. According to the ESA, the expo drew more than 48,000 video game professionals, investor, journalists, and retailers from more than 100 countries. The victory is a big step for UW-Stout’s new game design program. “It’s a remarkable milestone for Flash Frozen to win the national title and be created by students from a program that is only four years old,” said program director Diane Christie. Even before the competition, UW-Stout’s game design and development program was already making a name for itself: Earlier this year, the Princeton Review ranked it among the top 30 video game programs in the U.S. and Canada.

The Flash Frozen team.