indepedent-games-festival posts

Later this month the Independent Games Festival will hold its 2009 edition at the Game Developers Conference. Recently the organization behind the largest event supporting independent game creation announced an upgrade to its Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Normally the prize would be $20,000 to the development team behind the game that wins but thanks to a sponsorship from Mountain Dew the grand prize amount has increased to $30,000 for the 2009 edition

Meanwhile voting has begun for the Audience Award category with 15 games from the main competition that have playable demos picked to get your votes. The winner will be announced along with the other categories during GDC on March 25. If you want more info on the various games in the 2009 edition of the IGF check out our extensive multi-part series.

With the IGF finalists announced, game makers only have a short while longer to find out the best of the best in indie games from last year. From the best overall game to the one with the most impressive art, there's several different categories for indie game designers to aspire to be the top of. This week we're going to take a look at a few of the games that have made it to the finals.

One of the lesser categories in the IGF is Technical Excellence. While still important, it doesn't receive as much attention as some of the other categories. This year, though, there's a lot of excellent entries in this category. They are all great on every front, but they truly shine in their excellent technical accomplishments over everything else. These are the games that push the envelope forward and show just what we can do with computers. So take a gander at what these independent developers have to offer to you. You won't be disappointed!