SA born Desktop Dungeons makes the IGF Grand Prize finals

4 January 2011

Hey, we’re in the 13th annual Independant Games Festival finals!

By “we” I’m actually exhibiting some South African pride and proclaiming that the achievement of one South African automatically grants gamers nationwide the right to laud said achievement as one the whole country can be proud of.

All that’s OK, because I know the local indie dev guy in question – trilby aficionado and regional Guybrush Threepwood lookalike contest winner, Rodain Joubert, who is now part of the team at QCF Design.

His rather good game, Desktop Dungeons, has been nominated in the IGF’s Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Design categories, which is a pretty big deal.

Previous winners in the IGF include Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid, World of Goo, Darwinia, Braid, Aufiosurf, N+, and Narbacular Drop – which, of course, went on to become Portal.

This year, Desktop Dungeons is up against Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Minecraft, Nidhogg, and SpyParty, amongst others.

Desktop Dungeons has generated quite a lot of industry buzz since launching last year. Even the guys at PopCap were hooked on it, and the game went on to make Gamasutra’s list of the top 10 indie titles of 2010. You can download a freeware version of the game over on QCF’s website. It may negatively impact your future productivity.

The IGF has been going annually since 1998, “to encourage innovation in game development and to recognise the best independent game developers.” This year’s event is happening in San Francisco, from 28 February to 4 March.

I hit Rodain on GoogleTalk for a world exclusive quote, but he’s apparently been abducted by goats or something. So instead, I’ll just pretend he said, “These spurious rumours about me playing Dance Central at rAge have been greatly exaggerated. Oh, and yay me!”

Obviously, everybody here at MyGaming wishes Rodain the best of luck with the IGF finals.

Discuss Desktop Dungeon’s entry in the IGF finals on the MyGaming forum.

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