monaco posts

It's been over a year since several developers of successful PC indie game titles announced plans for the Indie Fund, an organization dedicated to helping fund promising indie game titles. PC Gamer reports that during a panel at GDC 2011 today the Indie Fund finally revealed which games would receive its first phase of grants.

One of the games is one some of you may have heard of: Monaco, the winner of the grand prize in the 2010 Independent Games Festival. The top down stealth action game comes from the one man team (Andy Schatz) at Pocketwatch Games. The second title is Shadow Physics, a platformer set in a world of shadows cast by shadows. The final game title to receive funding is Q.U.B.E., a title from Toxic Games that's a first person puzzle title with some similarities to Portal. There's no word on how much money each development team received from the Indie Fund. Meanwhile the organization still has half of its money and is still taking submissions from other indie game developers.

The second annual Indie Game Challenge has announced its finalist for the 2011 edition of the independent game competition sponsored by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, GameStop and The Guildhall. Like last year, six finalists each were picked for the non-professional and professional categories. You can check out the finalist after the jump.

All of the nominated teams will be flown to the DICE Summit in Las Vegas where the winning game and team in each category will be announced on February 11. The winning team in both categories will get $100,000. All of the team will also be able to have meeting with top publishers. In addition the Indie Game Challenge will also name the winner of the Kongregate Award for best browser-based game.

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.

It's time for the final, and most important, category in the IGF. The Seamus McNally Grand Prize holds the largest cash reward and prestige out of any category, and for good reason. Here are games that epitomize polished perfection, and whoever wins the grand prize is sure to find publishers knocking on their door for an exclusive deal. Every game in the grand prize category this year was in one of the other minor cateogries, which is not particularly shocking, even tif it does not happen all that often. If you look back upon previous years, there's normally one game that makes it to the grand prize that doesn't quite fit anywhere else. This year, that's not the case. These games are the best of the best, and they deserved to be honored.