07.01.10: We are pleased to reveal the finalists for the twelfth annual Independent Games Festival Main Competition! Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to all who have participated this year. Subscribe to the brand new IGF News RSS feed for regular competition updates.
2009 - The Behemoth's follow-up to Alien Hominid, the IGF-winning Castle Crashers, tops XBLA charts to critical acclaim.
2009 - IGF multi-award winner World Of Goo launches as one of the best-selling, best-reviewed WiiWare titles of all time, alongside a popular PC version.
2009 - Petri Purho's Crayon Physics Deluxe spawns an iPhone version courtesy of Hudson, plus a popular PC downloadable version.
2008 - The team behind IGF Student Showcase finalist Narbacular Drop is hired by Valve. The game is reworked into Portal and goes on to win the coveted Game Developer's Choice "Best Game" award for 2008, as well as numerous game of the year accolades.
2008 - Design Innovation winner Braid debuts on Xbox Live Arcade to significant success.
2008 - Excellence in Audio winner Audiosurf launches on Valve's Steam distribution service and goes on to become the highest selling game of February, outselling even Valve's own Orange box (including Team Fortress 2 and Game Developer's Choice "Best Game" winner Portal.)
2007 - Design Innovation winner Everyday Shooter is signed by Sony for distribution on the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network, after Sony's John Hight plays the game at the IGF Pavilion during GDC 2007 - Everyday Shooter's Jon Mak also appears at the inaugural Independent Games Summit.
2006 - Grand prize winner Darwinia gets both digital distribution via Valve's Steam system and U.S. retail distribution from new indie label Cinemaware Marquee.
2005 - Multi award-winner Alien Hominid receives publishing deals in the U.S. (via O3 Publishing) and Europe(via Zoo Digital), much critical acclaim, and even spawns a mobile version.
2005 - Fan favorite N wins the audience award, and, as N+, releases as a hit XBLA title, as well as notable Nintendo DS and Sony PSP versions.
2004 - Innovative casual strategy game Oasis wins the web/downloadable grand prize, going on to launch on major online portals the following year.
2003 - Super X Studios' Wild Earth, a photographic game based around a worldwide safari, takes multiple prizes and subsequently becomes a motion simulator ride and eventually (in adapted form) a Wii title.
2000 - Tread Marks, created by the late Seumas McNally, which the IGF's grand prize is now named after, wins 3 major awards.
1999 - Vicarious Visions, now a major handheld / console developer, honored for Terminus.
The jumps you make off buildings floating above Boston, Massachusetts are all about style and timing. You perform stunts, weaving around the bustling City for points, making split-second decisions: do you snake around those girders to earn a dozen "kisses," or glide along the side of that steel super-skyscraper for massive "hugs"?
Aaaaa! then throws in the spectators -- as you fall, give fans the thumbs-up and protesters the finger. And if you're hungry for a bit of civil disobedience, you can even ready the spraypaint and tag government buildings for points.
The game will also teach you how to debristle a pig.
A Slow Year is a collection of four games, one for each season, about the expereince of observing things. Played on the Atari Video Computer System (aka Atari 2600), the game invites sedate observation and methodical action.
A Slow Year is a kind of videogame chapbook, a set of "game poems" that attempt to embrace maximum expressive constraint and representational condensation. The game will be available for PC and Mac in a custom Atari emulator, and for Atari as a limited edition cartridge and poetry set.
Closure is a puzzle platformer in which the parts of the world in blackness don't exist physically. Everything in light exists and everything in darkness is the void. You can carry around orbs of light which both brighten the world, and define it.
Part of the charm in the game is discovering it's mechanics for yourself, so I won't say much more here.
Nominations:
Excellence in Audio
Technical Excellence
Nuovo Award
Cogs is a 3D puzzle game where players build machines from sliding tiles. Players can choose from 50 levels and 3 gameplay modes. New puzzles are unlocked by building contraptions quickly and efficiently.
Heroes of Newerth (HoN), a session-based, multiplayer, Action-RPG, is heavily inspired by the popular Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients (DotA), but with vast improvements in graphics and gameplay.
In Heroes of Newerth, two teams of up to five players each take on the role of special Hero units. With the assistance of AI-controlled armies, each team sets out with the sole objective of destroying the other team’s base. As a match progresses, players can earn experience and gold which can be used to upgrade skills or purchase items to make their character more powerful. The team-oriented design of HoN coupled with unprecedented in-game Voice-Over-IP controls and Clan Support allow for an incredibly deep, tactical team-based experience.
Joe Danger aims to recreate the childish joy of the first time you took a toy motorbike, doused it in lighter fluid, lit it, and launched it at high speed over your carefully constructed ramp out a second story window, while all the kids in the neighbourhood cheered below.
You are Joe Danger, the world’s most determined stuntman. You live to thrill the crowd and break World Records. Take on your friends or race against your rivals – the reckless “Team Nasty”. You laugh in the face of danger, and it laughs back, as you bounce from boulder to boulder, on fire, towards that pile of mousetraps. Freeze the game at any point and edit your level however you want it. Once you are finished, share the joy.
Nominations:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Technical Excellence
Steal from the rich, keep it for yourself! Monaco is a 4-player co-op crime caper inspired by classic French heist movies and set in modern day Monte Carlo.
Nominations:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Excellence in Design
Owlboy
D-Pad Studio (Xbox Live Indie Games and Windows PC)
Take control of Otus the owl as you explore the islands in the sky. Travel through open settlements and forming allegiances with people on your way to help you overcome monster infested dungeons. Without the ability to talk, Otus must rely on his expressions to communicate with people he meets along the way. By helping them out, new Gunners will join your team, each with their own unique abilities. Help Otus discover the truth about the pirates threatening his home.
Take control of HardBoiled Chicken, the original Cock of War, and lead the rebellion against the draconian penguin oppressors to overthrow their hold on Albatropolis!
"Rocketbirds:Revolution!" is a cinematic 2D action/puzzler set in the Rocketbirds universe, a world filled with angry and often violent birds...
Nominations: Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Excellence in Visual Art
Excellence in Audio
Shatter is a retro-inspired brick breaking-game that merges familiar action with unique twists and a modern-crafted production approach. It incorporates innovative controls with physics effects, power-ups, special attacks, and boss battles which combine to provide a truly captivating interactive experience. Shatter has a vibrant 3D style presented across 10 distinct worlds, and along with a fully scored soundtrack featuring over 90 minutes of original electronica, they help draw the player into the universe of Shatter, allowing them to fully invest in the plight of Bat 11-38.
Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who's trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages) from an evil fetus in a jar wearing a tux. Just your standard everyday run of the mill video game.
Our meaty hero will leap from walls, over seas of buzz saws, through crumbling caves and pools of old needles, Sacrificing his own well being to save his damsel in distress. Super Meat Boy brings the old school difficulty of classic Hardcore retro titles, combines them with current generation graphics technology and stream lines them down to the essential no BS, straight forward, twitch reflex platforming.
Ramping up in difficulty from hard to soul crushing SMB will drag Meat boy though haunted hospitals, salt factories and even hell itself. And if 200+ single player levels weren't enough SMB also throws in multiplayer game modes, a level editor and tons of unlockable secrets, warp zones and popular indie characters like Gish, Alien Hominid and Tim from braid to play as.
Nominations:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Excellence in Audio
Trauma tells a story of a young woman who survives a car accident. Recovering at the hospital, she has dreams that shed light on different aspects of her identity - such as the way she deals with the loss of her parents. Trauma lets you experience those dreams in an interactive way, reminiscent of Point-and-Click Adventure Games. It builds upon this established formula by introducing a gesture-based interface, real-time 3D technology for dynamic level layouts, unique photographic visuals and a level design philosophy that focuses on creating a rich experience rather than an elaborate puzzle challenge. Combined with the unconventional story, it is aimed to be a compact and deep game for a literate and mature audience.
Nominations:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Excellence in Visual Art
Excellence in Audio
Tuning is a platformer, where the levels are gradually presented weirder and weirder, creating visual puzzles where the player has to figure out how what he sees relates to his own actions in the game.
Won an award at this year's IndieCade for being a "Sublime Experience", and has been shown in venues as part of several video game installations.
Arkwright, inventor of the world famous Fluro (mechanized-fluid automaton) is on a quest to finish his next great invention - The Device - that will alter existence in unfathomable ways.
Travel to different industrial sites that use Arkwright’s Fluro invention to run their machinery. The Fluros, thought to be lifeless machines, seem to be developing minds of their own, mutating into new forms and running amok. It is up to Arkwright to understand (and exploit) these strange evolutions, and apply what has emerged in the field back to his lab work at home. Gather these evolved Fluros and machinery and bring them back to Arkwright’s lab to finish his ‘Device’, pushing the frontiers of science in this steam-punk universe.
‘Vessel’ is built on a physics and fluid simulation engine featuring the unique ability to simulate characters composed entirely of fluid. Explore physically modeled worlds, solve puzzles by controlling fluid and machines, and harness the power of the mysterious ‘Fluro’ creatures that populate the land.
Boryokudan Rue is a tale of science-fiction mixed with film-noir, following two separate, while interweaving stories. First, you play as Azriel Odin, a regretful cop en route to planet Barracus to meet and extract a mysterious defector trying to escape from the notorious crime gruop, the Boryokudan. Second, you play as Delta-Six, an amnesiac patient in a sterilized facility, who must survive and escape in order to find out why he is there.
The game features a traditional 'verb box' point 'n click interface, an intuitive notes and names system for investigations, and a fine-tuned action system, fair to both action and non-action gamers. It is a full-length game spanning over 80 rooms with hand-painted backgrounds, dozens of characters with animation, a neo-noir soundtrack by Nathan Allen Pinard, and featuring 4-8 hours of gameplay. The game was developed over the course of nearly two years with the free engine, Adventure Game Studio, with additional help by Nathan Allen Pinard on music. It is set to be released in the near future.
What if you saw the world with your ears? Inspired by M.C. Escher’s classic optical illusion and the echolocation of dolphins, The Devil’s Tuning Fork allows the player to explore a new mode of perception through sound visualization.
Dreamside Maroon is an exploration game that lets the player grow a vine to the moon. Along the way there are sights to see, lamps to light, and fireflies to collect. Experience freedom of movement and travel. Grow the vine in interesting shapes and colors.
Igneous
DigiPen Institute of Technology (Windows PC using Xbox 360 controller)
Igneous challenges you to conquer lava waves, crumbling bridges and a lost
city to free yourself from the fiery depths of a volcano. Jump and roll
through each stage to survive the hellish inferno!
Paper Cakes
Utrecht School of the Arts & University of Southern California (Windows PC and Mac)
A mind-boggling puzzle platformer on a virtual piece of paper.
Find your way to the cake by folding the level itself! The game consists of 40 levels, gradually introducing new gameplay mechanics and slowly increasing difficulty.
This game is the result of a collaboration between students from the Utrecht School of the Arts and students from the University of Southern California. Part of the 4th year programme of Game Design and Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts is to work on a project for a real external client. In our case, the client is Wacom. The goal was to create several applications or games for Wacom's Bamboo Mini platform. This game is one of those.
Puddle is a platform game taking place everywhere in our world, coming from a human body to a space shuttle.
In Puddle, the avatar is represented by a large amount of liquid particles, flowing from a part of a level to the other.
The player isn't allowed to act directly on the avatar, he is only able to tilt the level to the right or the left.
Liquid properties and level design are always different, rejuvenating the fun at each level for the player.
The slowness of the tilt and the lack of friction on the liquid require the player to anticipate the dangers.
The player doesn't have to bring his entire puddle to the goal, but only to keep as much as he can, dodging fire, rifts, and other dangers.
Puzzle Bloom
The National Academy of Digital, Interactive Entertainment (Unity)
Puzzle Bloom is the innovative action-puzzle game where you control the tree spirit Canotila in her quest to bring back life to her island.
Canotila needs the assistance of the island's native creatures to get past the rigid machines of the world. She flies from creature to creature and uses her powers to guide them.
New life will bloom into the world for each time Canotila breaks a machine, bringing Canotila closer to her ultimate goal of a return to nature.
No download needed: Solve puzzles in a full 3D environment that runs directly in your browser.
Bend the static rules of traditional puzzle games by moving between creatures.
Enjoy the beautiful graphics of Canotila's rise of nature.
Spectre
USC Interactive Media (Windows PC and Mac)
On a quiet winter night, Joseph Wheeler stares up into the snow and tries to recall the nine moments that shaped his life. In Spectre, you will travel through his memory and relive those nine moments, choosing through your actions how his life will be remembered.
Spectre is a recombinant narrative platformer, a game that tells a life story. The landscape before you is not a physical world, but 73 years' worth of Joseph's memory: moments of joy and fear, light and darkness. As you navigate through his specific recollections, related events will glow bright. If you succeed in these moments of play and follow a glowing path, you will find a theme uniting his experience, and uncover a little more of his fading memory. If not, your nightly story will end in confusion.
With over a hundred memories linked to fifty-two different ending themes, there are many possible narratives to discover in Spectre. Different stories will highlight different facets of his experience and personality, leaving the player with a compelling, if never entirely complete, impression of the man, his place in the world, and what he sees when he stares upwards into the endlessly falling snow.
