igf-2014
Latest
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."
Papers, Please and The Last of Us honored at GDC awards show
Designer Lucas Pope came close to apologizing for his frequent appearance on stage at 2014's Indie Games Festival Awards, collecting award after award for Papers, Please. The dystopian game of bureaucracy and hard-earned immigration was recognized by a panel of industry peers for its considered narrative, game design, and ... downloadability? Pope couldn't help but poke fun at the vestigial "Best Downloadable Game" category, noting the distinct advantage of making a game that's a quick 40MB download. Papers, Please also won for innovation in the Game Developers Choice Awards, the more mainstream half of the evening's show. Naughty Dog's own take on dystopia, The Last of Us, won here for best design, best narrative, and best overall game of the year. (This despite fellow nominee Super Mario 3D World having some pretty sweet overalls.) For the rest of the winners, including some gongs for Device 6, Risk of Rain and Grand Theft Auto 5, please see below.
Independent Games Festival reveals 2014 Student Showcase winners
Independent Games Festival organizers have revealed the winners of this year's IGF Student Showcase category, honoring entries from the NHTV University of Applied Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Cambridge, among other institutions. This year's top picks feature Hopoo Games' run-and-gun roguelike platformer Risk of Rain, Albert Shih's forced-perspective puzzler Museum of Simulation Technology, and Hafiz Azman and Winston Lee's single-switch rhythm game Rhythm Doctor. Other winning games include Mahdi Bahrami and Moslem Rasouli's Engare, Philipp Beau and Daniel Goffin's Symmetrain, Ostrich Banditos' Westerado, Unblanched Peanuts' Foiled, and Hack n' Hide's Cyber Heist. Five additional games received honorable mentions. This year's IGF saw a record-breaking number of entries, including 346 projects developed by students. The IGF's Main Competition finalists were announced earlier this month, nominating indie standouts like The Stanley Parable, Device 6, and Papers, Please.
IGF 2014 finalists: Device 6, Papers, Please, Don't Starve, The Stanley Parable, more
Finalists in the Independent Games Festival for 2014 have been announced, running the gamut of creativity and novelty that characterizes the indie games scene. This year in particular saw a record number of student submissions. Simogo's Device 6 – one of our favorite games of 2013 – is up for an award in Excellence in Visual Art, on top of Excellence in Narrative and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Lucus Pope's Papers, Please is up for a bunch of awards too, including the Nuovo award as well as Excellence in Design and the Grand Prize. The Stanley Parable, another one of our top selections of 2013, is a finalist in Excellence in Audio and the Grand Prize, while Brace Yourself Games' Crypt of the Necrodancer is nominated for Design. Klei's Don't Starve is up for Design and the Grand Prize, and Jason Roberts' Gorogoa received a nod for Visual Art. This year's grand prize looks to be a heated competition between Papers, Please, The Stanley Parable, Don't Starve, Device 6, Jazzpunk and – deep breath – Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!" Winners for each category will be chosen on March 19, at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. For the full list of this year's nominees, along with each category's jury-selected honorable mentions, head past the break.
IGF 2014 is, like, super popular
People are really into this whole "video game" thing – the annual Independent Games Festival has once again received a record number of entries, this year with 656 Main Competition contestants, topping last year's record of 589. Games in the running for an IGF 2014 award include Dejobaan's Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby, Vlambeer's Nuclear Throne, Blendo Games' Quadrilateral Cowboy (shown above), Ico-inspired Against the Wall, Vagabond Dog's Always Sometimes Monsters, thechineseroom's Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, first-person toddler-horror simulator Among the Sleep and The Banner Saga, the $700,000 Kickstarted RPG. Plus 648 more. Whew. This year there will be six finalists per category, rather than five, and the Technical Excellence category is kaput. The Student Showcase and Nuovo Award will both remain at eight contestants, and each category will still see honorable mentions. Valve once again offers Steam deals to all IGF finalists. Last year, minimalist food vendor saga Cart Life swept the top prizes. The IGF Awards take place as usual at GDC in San Francisco in March.
Valve renews IGF deal, finalists to be offered Steam distribution
Valve will offer Independent Game Festival finalists the chance to bring their games to Steam, renewing the agreement set in place last year. As the IGF announcement notes, several of last year's finalists came to Valve's portal after being nominated, including Gone Home, MirrorMoon EP, and Kentucky Route Zero. The award is no doubt illustrious, but a Steam distribution agreement is a big deal, too. Fine print time: The offer applies to every Main Competition finalist in jury-voted categories. That means each finalist for the Seamus McNally Grand Prize, the Nuovo Award, and the Excellence in Art, Narrative, Audio, and Design Awards can have a bite of the Steam pie, working directly with Valve to release their games on PC, Mac, and Linux. The deadline for IGF 2014 submissions is October 19, while entries for the student showcase are due by October 31. The finalists will be announced in January, and two months later the winners will be crowned at GDC 2014.
Independent Games Festival 2014 now accepting submissions
The 16th annual Independent Games Festival is now accepting submissions from indie developers. Those looking to enter the competition must enter by October 19. Entries for the student showcase are due October 31. IGF nominees compete for roughly $60,000 in prizes across a number of categories, including Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design, and Narrative Awards. Becoming an IGF finalist may not guarantee success, though finalists' games will be playable at GDC 2014 in San Francisco.
