Half of the members of the undergraduate team of the Department of Multimedia and Entertainment Science, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, which won the 2015 Action Games Group Award, chose to continue studying in the its graduate institute and created the "Faith Game" company team during their studies. The team also entered the General Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and continued to develop their award-winning graduation topic—"Stray Cells." After gaining the opportunity to cooperate with the domestic game maker Rayark Inc., "Stray Cells" was officially named "MO: Astray" after three years of research and development and officially launched on October 25, 2019 in the world's largest PC game platform—Steam—becoming the first case of domestic gaming graduation project turned into a business one

【Chairman Chih-Cheng Sun of the Department of Multimedia and Entertainment Science, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology (middle in front row) and Instructor Cheng-Hsun Hsieh (left in front row) and the "Faith Game" graduate students (from left to right in back row) Jing-Yi Hou, Yi-Zhen Tsai, You-Dian Chang, and Bo-Chi Huang】

"Faith Game" was invited in 2017 and 2018 to participate in the latest development showcase of the game company Rayark Inc. In June this year, it was invited by the Digi+ Digital Industry Promotion Office of the Ministry of Economic Affairs to represent Taiwan at Bitsummit, Japan's largest independent game fair, where the team received an exclusive interview with the official Twitch channel. The quality of the game was highly recognized. Instructor Cheng-Hsun Hsieh, who once instructed the team and is now working in the STUST Incubation Center, said that every year, the national game-related department graduates have many outstanding works, but unfortunate they had to quit due to personal, family, military service, economic and other factors. With the help of Rayark Inc., "Faith Game" can overcome the difficulties and walk on a path toward commercialization as a graduate student. This is quite valuable. It is hoped that in the future, the industry and the academic community will be able to work together to nurture more new generations of game creators. In this regard, it is extremely necessary to have a dedicated organization to offer its assistance in the promotion.

【“MO Astray" developed by "Faith Game" is a puzzle game with horizontal action】

Yang-Ming You, Chief Executive Officer of Rayark Inc. mentioned in an interview with Bahamut that he hoped to help the student team in game development through industry-university cooperation, removing the obstacles encountered by the team in the process of exploration. With the experience of Rayark Inc. in accumulating its market experience and quality requirements, "Faith Game" has pushed their works to the world. As graduate student Jing-Yi Hou said, in the process of cooperation with Rayark Inc., both the CEO and Director Yong-Zhen Li are personally involved in each discussion and personally test each version, especially in the most unfamiliar areas. STUST is grateful to their great help in localized design, version control, and music sound production.

【The pixel art style of “MO Astray” has received international attention】

After more than ten years of development and planning, the Department of Multimedia and Entertainment Science, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology has always aimed at becoming the best partner in the industry. The successful case of the business transformation proves that the department has successfully entered the stage of supporting the industry upgrade, and can jointly propose and develop the industry of innovative gaming products. In this regard, Chairman Chih-Cheng Sun of the department said that the graduate institute is a practical master's class, which can help students realize their dreams of self-study games. In the future, they will plan to set up a game media center to coordinate production and education cooperation and create more students. The self-developed games were commercialized, so that the outstanding creativity of the students was not interrupted due to university graduation.

【“MO Astray " received great responses when it was exhibited at Bitsummit 2019.】