independent-games-festival posts

2008 Independent Games Festival winners announced

by John Callaham Mar 26th 2009 @ 8:00AM

Wednesday night was also the night that the Game Developers Conference hosted the awards ceremony for the 11th annual Independent Games Festival, The largest festival/competition devoted to indie game development. The big winner of the night was the unusual 2D title Blueberry Garden which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize of $30,000 .

Other winners included Cortex Command which won both for Technical Excellence and the Audience Award. The Excellence in Visual Art category went to Machinarium which the Excellent In Design award was given to Musaic Box. BrainPipe scored the Excellence in Audio award and the Innovation Award went to Between. Tag: the Power of Paint was the winner of the Best Student Game Award and the Direct2Drive Vision Award went to Osmos. Make sure to check out our recent multi-part feature on all the nominees for the 2008 IGF awards.

Filed under: Contests, Indie

Freeware Friday: Tag: The Power of Paint

by James Murff Feb 6th 2009 @ 2:00PM

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

It's not often that a game with the sort of clever manipulation of the environment like Portal comes along. For those keen on their history, though, there is Narbacular Drop, which was created by the Portal team while attending Digipen and shares the same sort of gameplay. This article is not about Narbacular Drop (although a future one might be!), but rather Tag: The Power of Paint, a game that brings to mind all the excellent gameplay innovations that Narbacular Drop displayed. It is one-of-a-kind, and here's hoping that a company like Valve takes notice, especially after it was one of the IGF Student Showcase finalists.

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Filed under: Features, Indie

IGF Finalist Showcase: Seamus McNally Finalists '09

by James Murff Feb 3rd 2009 @ 2:00PM

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.

Well, we've seen all the other categories that the IGF has to offer, so it's time for the biggest and baddest category of them all: the Seamus McNally Grand Prize finalists. All of these games of the best that the IGF has to offer, so we've decided to replace the Indie Showcase this week with the final edition of the IGF Finalist Showcase. Now take a look at some of the games that you will probably be drolling over buying in the next year!

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Filed under: Features, Indie

IGF Finalist Showcase: Audio Excellence

by James Murff Jan 30th 2009 @ 1:00PM

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.

While there are many important categories in any competition, most revolve around the visual and gameplay aspects of a game. When a competition includes an audio category, some dismiss it as merely a category for the audiophiles. But audio has more to do with a game than most people realize. Audio is part of what binds a game together into a coherent whole and helps define it. Great audio can turn a decent game into a phenomenal one, and bad audio can take that same game and make it terrible. It is often overlooked, but not by the IGF judges! Here's five of the best entries for those that know that audio plays a pretty big role.

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Filed under: Features, Indie

IGF Finalist Showcase: Visual Art Excellence

by James Murff Jan 29th 2009 @ 1:00PM

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.

While a lot of players say they want new gameplay, innovative design, or awesome technical prowess, this isn't the majority. No the majority of players want clean, crisp, and altogether nice graphics in their game. If the graphics don't fit, then players assume the rest of the game doesn't fit either. From audio to gameplay to narrative is included in this. Players are a fickle lot, and they want eye candy. So here's the five best entries in the visual arts (AKA graphics) category of the IGF competition.

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Filed under: Features, Indie

IGF Finalist Showcase: Design Excellence

by James Murff Jan 28th 2009 @ 1:00PM

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.

While games have to be innovative and technically competent, they should also be fun. Everyone loves a game that challenges the preconceived notions of gameplay in a way that is incredibly fun and engaging. Whether this means combining existing gameplay elements into something new or pulling new designs from the void in an effort of pure creativity doesn't matter. All that matters in the end product, and in the case of these five IGF finalists, their designers knew what they were doing. These end products are great!

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Filed under: Features, Indie

IGF Finalist Showcase: Innovation

by James Murff Jan 27th 2009 @ 1:00PM

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.

The most sought after quality of a game in the here and now is not how pretty it looks, how realistic the sound is, or even how fun it is. What matters most in a sea of look-a-likes is the all-important trait of innovation. An innovative game can get much more mileage than your average fun-but-simple experience, as people will talk about it even if it does not offer anything new in the realm of game4play or entertainment. Sometimes being made to think is a refreshing change of pace, after all. So here's five of the most innovative entries in the IGF competition.

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Filed under: Features, Indie

Independent Games Festival 2009 finalists announced

by John Callaham Jan 7th 2009 @ 10:00AM

It's perhaps the highest profile contest for indie game developers and today the Independent Games Festival announced the finalists for the 2009 edition in several catagories. The games were chosen out of 226 entries this year with the finalists picked by a number of game developers and journalists.

Winning one or more of the awards in the past has lead to bigger things for the games and their creators. Last year's winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize (worth $20,000) was Crayon Physics which, ironically, is due to release its commercial version for the PC later today. Hit indie games World of Goo and Audiosurf also won IGF awards last year before being released to great acclaim and sales.

The winners of the 2009 IGF will be announced on March 25 during the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco. Check out the nominees after the jump:

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Filed under: Contests, Downloads, Indie

Submissions open for 2009 Independent Games Festival

by John Callaham Jul 1st 2008 @ 12:30PM

If you are an independent game developer looking for exposure for your title, there's no better way to do it than entering the Independent Games Festival. Today the organizers of the IGF announced that submissions are now open for the 2009 edition of the festival. This will be the 11th annual edition of the IGF which in the past has awarded cash prizes to such acclaimed games like Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf and World of Goo.

The deadline to submit games to the 2009 IGF is November 1 for the main competition and November 15 for the student competition. The awards will be given out on March 25 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Over $50,000 in cash prizes will be given out in several categories, including the new Innovation Award. The big one remains the Seumas McNally Grand Prize where one game's dev team will receive $20,000.

Filed under: Contests, Culture