The Independent Games Festival has announced the Main Competition finalists for the thirteenth annual presentation of its awards, which celebrate the brightest and most influential creations to come out of the independent video game development community in the past year.
This year’s finalists are led by multiple nominations for standout titles including Frictional Games’ psychological horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Mojang’s acclaimed 3D worldbuilding sandbox title Minecraft, which received three nominations each.
Other multiple-nominated titles include South African bred QCF Design’s short playtime ‘dungeon crawl’ adventure Desktop Dungeons; Messhof’s two-player retro fencing game Nidhogg, which received 3 nominations including a Nuovo Award nod; and Supergiant Games’ lush isometric adventure title Bastion.
The almost 400 Main Competition entries represent a near 30 percent growth in game entrants over last year’s record 306 titles, itself a 35 percent rise over the previous year. This emphasizes the continued popularity and importance of the IGF, which has helped to highlight and popularise the major independent games of the last decade, such as Darwinia, Braid, World Of Goo, Machinarium and Limbo.
All of the finalists will be competing for a share of nearly US$50,000 in prizes in the various categories, including the US$20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. The awards will take place at the conclusion of the Independent Games Festival Awards on the evening of 2 March 2011.
The full list of finalists for the 2011 Independent Games Festival, with jury-picked ‘honourable mentions’ to those top-quality games that didn’t quite make it to finalist status, are as follows:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games)
SpyParty (Chris Hecker)
Desktop Dungeons (QCF Design)
Minecraft (Mojang)
Nidhogg (Messhof)
Honourable mentions: Neptune’s Pride (Iron Helmet Games); Super Crate Box (Vlambeer); Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale (Carpe Fulgur); Bit.Trip Runner (Gaijin Games); Retro City Rampage (Vblank Entertainment).
Excellence In Visual Art
Bastion (Supergiant Games)
The Dream Machine (Cockroach)
Cave Story (2010 Edition) (Nicalis)
Bit.Trip Runner (Gaijin Games)
Hohokum (Honeyslug & Richard Hogg)
Honourable mentions: Retro City Rampage (Vblank Entertainment); Cobalt (Oxeye Game Studio); Faraway (Steph Thirion); Helsing’s Fire (Ratloop); Flotilla (Blendo Games).
Technical Excellence
Minecraft (Mojang)
Confetti Carnival (SpikySnail Games)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games)
Neverdaunt:8Bit (Robot Loves Kitty)
Miegakure (Marc Ten Bosch)
Honourable mentions: Cobalt (Oxeye Game Studio); Achron (Hazardous Software); Hazard: The Journey Of Life (Demruth); Overgrowth (Wolfire Games); Swimming Under Clouds (Piece Of Pie Studios)
Excellence In Design
Desktop Dungeons (QCF Design)
Super Crate Box (Vlambeer)
Nidhogg (Messhof)
Faraway (Steph Thirion)
Minecraft (Mojang)
Honourable mentions: Helsing’s Fire (Ratloop); Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale (Carpe Fulgur); Flotilla (Blendo Games); Bo (Mahdi Bahrami); Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now [B.U.T.T.O.N.] (Copenhagen Game Collective)
Excellence In Audio
Bastion (Supergiant Games)
Retro City Rampage (Vblank Entertainment)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games)
Bit.Trip Beat (Gaijin Games)
Cobalt (Oxeye Game Studio)
Honourable mentions: Bit.Trip Runner (Gaijin Games); Cave Story (2010 Edition) (Nicalis); Jamestown (Final Form Games); NightSky (Nicalis); Planck (Shadegrown Games)
Best Mobile Game
Shot Shot Shoot (Erik Svedang)
Colorbind (Nonverbal)
Helsing’s Fire (Ratloop)
Solipskier (Mikengreg)
Halcyon (Stfj)
Honourable mentions: Flick Kick Football (PikPok); Shibuya (Nevercenter); Spirits (Spaces Of Play); Tentacles (Press Play); Trainyard (Matt Rix)
Nuovo Award
Another key part of the 2011 Independent Games Festival is the Nuovo Award, which is intended to “honour abstract, short form, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games.” This year the prize in this category is a cool US$5,000.
The Nuovo Award has eight contenders this year, including: Monobanda’s Bohm; Cardboard Computer’s A House In California; Messhof’s Nidhogg; Stout Games’ Dinner Date; Nicolai Troshinsky’s Loop Raccord; Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad’s The Cat and the Coup; Copenhagen Game Collective’s Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now (B.U.T.T.O.N.); and Demruth’s Hazard: The Journey Of Life.
Discuss the 13th annual Independent Games Festival finalists on the MyGaming forum.
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