As one form of effort to preserve Indonesian culture in the era of globalization, four Media Production students of the Vocational Education Program of Universitas Indonesia (UI), also members of the MADH Creative team, created a game, titled “Lodaya Conquest.” This game is an innovation that transforms conventional media, such as storybooks, animation, and dance art, into new interaction experiences in an attractive digital game.
This game focuses on the Reog Ponorogo folklore, as an ongoing effort to promote, preserve, and educate players about Nusantara culture. Through visual 2D pixel and illustration concepts, the players are invited to explore the Lodaya Universe and adventure as Klono Sewandono to explore the rich story and complete challenges at every step of his journey.
The Director of Vocational Education Program UI, Padang Wicaksono, S.E., Ph.D, stated that digital transformation happening at the moment can be utilized by students as vessels to positively create. Through the Media Production study program, Vocational Education Program UI continues to produce competitive graduates in the creative industry, such as games, comics, films, e-sports, music, fashion media, human-computer interaction, and others.
“Vocational Education Program UI always supports the students to become a leading agent of change to create interesting and positively impactful innovations for society. This game product created by the Media Production students is expected to continue to develop and be noticed by people from various circles. Curriculum development with industry continues to be carried out so that the needs of the community are in accordance with the learning provided to students,” said Padang.
Owing to this innovation, the MADH Creative team, consisting of Fikri Hasan, Dani Bintang Aprilyanto, Bella Maedevia, and Rifqi Raditya Dewangga, managed to attain 3rd place in the Olimpiade Vokasi Indonesia (OLIVIA) IX 2024 competition for the Digital and Creative Technology (GiveTech) category. OLIVIA is an annual event held by the Indonesian Vocational Higher Education Forum (FPTVI) which is held at Hasanuddin University, Makassar, this year.
This time, OLIVIA went with the theme “Inspiring the future through empowering innovative human resources and digital-based entrepreneurship’,” which became a place for creativity and competition for all vocational students in Indonesia. For this purpose, the MADH Creative team presents their game, titled “Lodaya Conquest: Transformation of the Reog Ponorogo Story Through 2D Game Media as an Effort to Preserve Local Culture.”
Competing with more than 3,200 participants, Fikri and the team successfully advanced to become the top 300 finalists with vocational students from various universities in Indonesia. The competition, which took place from July 18 to 19, 2024, presented 72 universities from 16 provinces in Indonesia.
Fikri stated that the competition process consists of making game proposals, screen recordings related to gameplay, and source code programming behind the game. Then, all the files collected will enter the assessment stage by the jury. After passing this stage, the MADH Creative team succeeded in becoming one of seven finalist teams in the Digital & Creative Technology category. Dressed in a combination of Reog Ponorogo and UI alma mater, Fikri and his team succeeded in presenting the Lodaya Conquest game with satisfactory results.
“For further development, we hope that this game can be played with a mobile platform, so the players can play the game using their phones. In addition, there is also a game in development, namely a game that will be used in the upcoming series of community service events in Cibuluh Village. Moreover, this game will also become the final product of our applied thesis writing during the eighth semester,” said Fikri.
