igf-2015
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Bounden, Fingle studio closes its doors in April
Game Oven Studios, the independent Dutch team behind body-morphing mobile games Bounden, Bam fu, Fingle and Friendstrap, will be disbanded in April, studio co-founder Adriaan de Jongh announced in a blog post today. Game Oven will release its final game, Jelly Reef, in March on iOS and Android. Game Oven developers de Jongh and Bojan Endrovski will continue to support Bounden, Fingle, Bam fu and Jelly Reef, but they will remove Friendstrap from stores on February 1. De Jongh and Endrovski founded Game Oven in November 2011 with their first game, Fingle, which was nominated for an IGF Nuovo award. Bounden, a two-player dancing game for mobile, is nominated this year for an IGF Nuovo prize and a GDC Innovation Award. Game Oven received financial support for Bounden from the Dutch grant program, Game Fund, and worked with the Dutch National Ballet to create the choreography. And, despite Game Oven's closure, Bounden is doing "really well," de Jongh told me today. "We're not making millions, no, but Bounden's profit is larger than the development costs, so maybe awards are not that disconnected from the financial success of the game," he said. "With Fingle, IGF helped us build an audience, helped us reach that critical mass, and even though we no longer do any marketing effort for Fingle, we still make one minimum wage from the game every month. The way things look now, it seems like Bounden is on that same road."
Get an IGF 2015-nominated game for free today only
PRY, a finalist in Excellence in Narrative at the 2015 Independent Games Festival, is free today on the App Store. PRY is a hybrid game, containing elements of film, literature and gaming. It tells the story of a Gulf War demolitions expert, allowing players to dive into his thoughts and explore his past, present and subconscious with the flicking or pinching of fingers. The free day is in celebration of the IGF nod, PRY's feature on FWA as Mobile of the Day, and the game's release on iPhone. PRY is broken into two parts; the first installment was previously out for iPad at $3. Once part two launches in March, the full-game price will go up slightly – but those who buy part one before March will receive the second half as a free update. PRY comes from two-person art collective and development studio Tender Claws, which focuses on the intersection of writing, art and technology. "Nomination by IGF is already an incredible validation," Tender Claws co-founder Samantha Gorman tells Joystiq. "We are a small team of two people who have looked up to and been inspired by current and past IGF nominees. It's so nice to know that our interventions in this space of storytelling are being seen and considered. Of course an IGF award would mean a great deal going forward. It would further give us license to establish our studio and continue to push the bounds of narrative in gameplay." The 2015 IGF awards will be held on Wednesday, March 4, during GDC in San Francisco. [Image: Tender Claws]
IGF 2015 finalists: The Talos Principle, 80 Days, Invisible Inc.
Finalists for the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 17th annual Independent Games Festival awards are Klei Entertainment's Invisible Inc., Croteam's The Talos Principle, Inkle Studios' 80 Days, Patrick Smith's Metamorphabet, 11 Bit Studio's This War of Mine and Team Outer Wilds' Outer Wilds. These games make appearances across other categories – Exellence in Visual Art, Narrative, Design, Audio and the Nuovo Award for unconventional game development – as well. Other games up for awards from the IGF are Lumino City, Else Heart.Break(), Pry, Three Fourths Home, Framed, Killer Queen, Shovel Knight, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, The Sailor's Dream, Desert Golfing, Elegy for a Dead World, Bounden and more, listed in full on the IGF website. The IGF jury nominated more than 30 games from a judging pool of almost 650. The IGF awards are held during GDC, alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards, on Wednesday, March 4 in San Francisco. Congrats to all the finalists! [Image: Klei Entertainment, Invisible Inc.]
IGF 2015 now accepting submissions
Indie developers, it's time to start applying the final coat of polish to your star projects. The Independent Games Festival is now accepting submissions for its 2015 event, giving eligible devs the chance to compete across multiple featured categories. IGF entrants compete for over $50,000 in prizes and awards for Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design, and Narrative. Finalists will be eligible for the event's prestigious Seumas McNally Grand Prize, which in previous years was awarded to indie standouts like Cart Life, Fez, and Papers, Please. Developers must pay a $95 entry fee to be considered for this year's IGF Awards. IGF Main Competition entries are due by October 22. Finalists will be announced on January 6, 2015. [Image: IGF]
