Dream Build Play
Microsoft game development contest
Dream Build Play (also known as Dream-Build-Play, Dream.Build.Play, and DreamBuildPlay) is an annual $75,000 Microsoft video game contest used to promote Microsoft XNA Game Studio and eventually Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It was announced in 2006, started in 2007, and ran until 2012.
In 2008 and 2009 it spanned over 100 countries and in 2010 it spanned 110 countries.
It was restarted in 2017 as the Dream.Build.Play 2017 Challenge. Notable winners include Dust: An Elysian Tail and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
Concept
Dream-Build-Play, as it was first called, is a game development contest designed to promote and encourage experienced game developers and enthusiasts to create innovative and fun-to-play indie games for Windows and Xbox 360 using Microsoft XNA Game Studio. In 2017, the contest was relaunched to challenge indie game developers to create UWP games across four categories.
Notable entries
Many winners have gone on to be published on Xbox LIVE Arcade:
A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda (Entered as A.R.E.S.)
Blazing Birds
Capsized
Cloudberry Kingdom
Dust: An Elysian Tail
Kung Fu Strike (Entered as HurricaneX, HurricaneX2, and HurricaneX2 Evolution in three separate Dream Build Play contests.)
The Adventures of Shuggy (Entered as Shuggy.)
The Bridge
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
Yo Ho Kablammo!
Zeit²
Dream Build Play Challenges
Here is a breakdown of all Dream Build Play Challenges, including lesser known Warm-Up Challenges:
2007 Warm-Up Challenge
Microsoft offered a Relatives of Spacewar Warm-Up Challenge precursor to the first Dream Build Play, awarding US$500 to the top five entries. The entries had to create a game based on the Spacewar Starter Kit.
“Dream Build Play” enters the record as microsoft game development contest. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dream, Build and Play can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dream Build Play” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dream, Build and Play provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19877507. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2007, 2012 and 2008.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dream Build Play” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.