Nemesis Creates Their Own FRC Game

Our award-winning game animation video begins, “Welcome to Nemesis 2590’s entry for the 2021 FIRST Game Design Challenge: FIRST Fusion...“

For this year’s Game Design Challenge (GDC), one of the remotely-judged 2021 FRC competitions, teams were tasked with creating their own functional FRC game, complete with a fully developed set of rules and playing field. Winners pitch their game ideas to the official FRC Game Design Team, for the opportunity to have their designs used in future FRC competitions. 

Nemesis’ designated GDC subteam, though working entirely virtually, dove straight in to tackle this challenge. By following the engineering design process as they would when building a robot, the group emerged with Nemesis’ own original FRC Game: FIRST Fusion.

Weeks of research, brainstorming, evaluating and refining ideas were essential to creating this finished product. The group made sure to incorporate some of the best aspects from past FRC games while still creating a unique design. Difficulty of tasks, strategic play, rookie/veteran inclusion, as well as player and audience engagement were some of the important factors considered when creating the game. On top of this, FIRST Fusion’s game field and rules were fine-tuned to ensure smooth, fair gameplay.

Nemesis’ GDC subteam created its very own game animation video, similar to the official FRC Kickoff videos that are released at the start of the build season every year. The team modeled, animated, and spliced together a video from scratch, describing the game challenge and giving a brief overview of the expected gameplay. FIRST Fusion’s game animation can be viewed below:

Upon submitting their game description documents and game animation video, the subteam gave a live, virtual presentation of their game to a panel of judges. At the official 2021 Game Design Challenge Awards show, it was announced that Nemesis’ FIRST Fusion won the Engineering Design Award in the FIRST Mid Atlantic region.