Microsoft is calling African Developers for its $200k challenge for game makers

Microsoft is calling African game makers for its 2017 Dream.Build.Play Challenge to “maximise their creativity and create experiences that engage gamers from across the world.”

The game makers competition is open to all creators, working solo or in teams of up to seven and are required to Create a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) game for one of the categories below by December 31, 2017, and you’ll have a chance to win cash prizes and share your game with the world.

Grand Prize: $100,000

Build a game that uses Azure Cloud Services on the backend, like Service Fabric, CosmosDB, containers, VMs, storage, and Analytics. Judges will give higher scores to games that use multiple services in creative ways-and will award bonus points for Mixer integration.

PC game

Grand Prize: $50,000

Create a Windows 10 game using whatever technology you prefer—even middleware like Unity, Cocos, and GameMaker—and publish it to the Windows Store. Using Windows 10 features like Cortana or Inking will give your game an advantage with the judges.

Mixed reality game

Grand Prize: $50,000

Create an immersive mixed reality experience that lets players interact with 3D volumetric content in a virtual space. Use whichever tools you prefer (like Unity) to build as long as your game uses Windows Mixed Reality. Judges will prefer games that incorporate audio content.

Console game

Grand Prize: $25,000

Build a UWP game for the Xbox One console family and incorporate the Xbox Live Creators Program with at least Xbox Live presence. Extra consideration will be given to games that incorporate Xbox Live services like leaderboards and statistics.

Applications for the challenge closes December 31, 2017.