An East End student and his team have been crowned the winners of a national competition to design a gaming app.

Tom Chipchase, 27, from Bow and his team Commando Kiwi have won the Make Something Unreal Live game development competition, created by Epic Games Inc and Train2Game.

Commando Kiwi developed an iOS game called ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Lost Chapters’ and were announced as winners by ‘Fighting Fantasy’ creators Ian Livingstone OBE and Steve Jackson at the NEC in Birmingham during the Gadget Show Live exhibition, on Sunday, April 15.

The team have won the chance to set up, make and design their own computer games within the UK.

Team leader Tom Chipchase said: “It feels brilliant to have won, and justifies the work the whole team has put in over the past few months.

“I think our game had the edge because it had a simple to use control mechanism. We stuck closely to the original source material where it made sense, but also made improvements thanks to the technology we had available.”

The Commando Kiwi squad based their game on the first book in the series; The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

Tom added: “It’s the 30th anniversary of the book this year so it seemed appropriate to go with it. We thought we’d have more freedom to put our own creative touches onto an older book.”