Finally, the winners of the German Developer Award have been announced. The Award Ceremony took place on January 20, 2021 in a live streamed show.

We’re very excited that the game “Jessika” by CGL-alumni Pierre Schlömp (story design & game mechanics), Seren Besorak (design of the pictures & sounds/ initiator of the project) and Sarah Abouzari (game programming) has won the Innovation Award, sponsored by the city of Cologne!

Since mid-2018, their Indie label Trie Trie Games has been part of the Cologne Game Incubator that promotes young start-up teams with free office space and mentoring in order to help their first projects to become market-ready. “Jessika” was released on steam last summer.

The game lets players slip into the role of a nameless hacker who gains access to the private network of a young woman to investigate her suicide. The player scours her digital footprints and tries to solve the mystery surrounding their suicide, delving deeper and deeper into her world of thought, experiencing her radicalization. While playing, you find video snippets from a filmed diary, pictures, texts and sound files. So, an increasingly complex image of Jessika develops.

The story of the game is inspired by the events surrounding the murders of the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU), and it reflects serious social problems we all have to deal with these days. All video sequences were shot with the support of the internationale filmschule köln with Lisa Sophie Kusz, a professional film and theatre actress.

For more information and the other award winners go to: www.deutscher-entwicklerpreis.de

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1251980/Jessika/
http://tritriegames.de/