Students win best international game at Expovit 2025

Institute of Digital Games students, Paul Psaila, Roxanne Poggi, Ema Grech, Zofia Matczak, Kyriaki Kostopoulou, Marvic Catania, and Pietro Noceti, have won the Best International Game at Expovit 2025 in Costa Rica. Their game, Internal Affairs, was selected among a number of international games including those from Canada and Malta exhibited at Expovit, a 3-day event showcasing games and celebrating the games industry in Costa Rica.

Product of Game Development Study Unit

Internal Affairs was developed as part of the curriculum of the Game Development study unit within the M.Sc. in Digital Games and was also shown at Gamescom 2025 where the team had the opportunity to pitch their game at the European Games Night. The game was developed by the team over one semester and the team has continued to polish the gameplay and has made a demo available.

International Collaboration with Costa Rica

In addition to exhibiting the student-made game, Dr Ahmed Khalifa also presented at the conference. Dr Khalifa also gave a tutorial on Simple Procedural Content Methods for Games where he gave an overview of the way various algorithms could be used in games and how to mix and match them to get the desired effect. In July, Dr Khalifa will also be presenting his research done together with New York University’s Matthew Siper, Muhammad Umair Nasir, and Julian Togelius, Nof1’s Lisa Soros and Juyan Azhang at The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in Costa Rica.

The Institute of Digital Games is also exploring a research project with T3AMPO studios to integrate game-based learning into their educational Mix-IT game, which was also shown at Playcon in Malta last year. Education in games is a core area of research at the Institute also resulting in the very successful learning game ArtBot and the RECLAIM recycling game where their collaboration recently won the Outstanding Transnational Collaboration Award by Xjenza Malta.

Game Research and Game Industry

Research remains at the forefront of the Institute of Digital Games, with three students recently traveling to present their work at the largest international game studies conference. However, in light of an increasingly dynamic local video game industry, it is exciting to see our students excel on the international stage with work that started from their study unit.

If you’re interested in playtesting your work or getting started, join the playtesting night in October and/or sign up to participate in Malta Global Game Jam scheduled for the beginning of 2027. Subscribe to the newsletter for more updates.