Independent Games Festival finalists announced
The finalists for the 9th annual Independent Games Festival have been announced, with Bit Blot's Aquaria taking the lead with four nominations, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Interesting note: Aquaria co-creator Derek Yu's other games include the popular Metroidvania platformer Eternal Daughter and the Jack Thompson-provoking I'm OK!.
Other finalists include the beautiful browser game Samorost 2 (play it now!), Xbox Live Arcade titles like RoboBlitz and Castle Crashers, episodic early-birds like Bone: The Great Cow Race (that's episode 2), student projects like DigiPen's Toblo, and more! The winners in each category will be announced at the IGF awards ceremony Wednesday, March 7th at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco.
As a judge in this year's Festival, the only game in my allotted roster was Samorost 2 which (perhaps unsurprisingly) was the only game that I had previously played. Check out the full list of finalists (congratulations everyone!) after the break.
Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Aquaria - Bit Blot
Armadillo Run - Peter Stock
Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design
RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment
Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games.
Best Web Browser Game:
Bubble Islands - dot-invasion
Gamma Bros - Pixeljam
Samorost 2 - Amanita Design.
Design Innovation Award:
Armadillo Run - Peter Stock
Aquaria - Bit Blot
Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games
Toblo - Digipen Institute of Technology
Toribash - NABI Software
Excellence In Visual Art
Castle Crashers - The Behemoth
Golf? - Luke Hetherington, Alex Austin, Josiah Pisciotta, and Andrew Laing
Aquaria - Bit Blot
RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment
Samorost 2 - Amanita Design.
Excellence In Audio
Bone: The Great Cow Race - Telltale Games
Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games
FizzBall - Grubby Games
Aquaria - Bit Blot
Racing Pitch - Skinflake
Technical Excellence
Arcane Legions: The Rising Shadow - Slitherine Software
Armada Online - EvStream
Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design
Blast Miner - Cryptic Sea
Bugs Of War - NinjaBee