‘Tis mighty stupid of me to have ’s Quest: Milestone 2 TIGS post">posted BQ yesterday, completely forgetting the nominations for this year’s Independent Games Festival were coming out today! Oh well, what can ya do:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
– Blueberry Garden
– CarneyVale Showtime
– Dyson
– Night Game
– Osmos
Excellence in Visual Art:
– Cletus Clay
– FEIST
– Machinarium
– PixelJunk Eden
– Zeno Clash
Excellence in Audio:
– Blueberry Garden
– BrainPipe
– Musaic Box
– PixelJunk Eden
– Retro/Grade
Excellence in Design:
– Musaic Box
– Night Game
– Osmos
– Retro/Grade
– Snapshot
Innovation Award:
– Between
– Coil
– The Graveyard
– Mightier
– You Have To Burn The Rope
Technical Excellence:
– Cortex Command
– IncrediBots
– The Maw
– Osmos
– PixelJunk Eden
Congrats to the nominees! 30% more entries this year than last year’s huge amount. (Find out more at IGF.com!) Whole lots of awesome, a little bit of WTF?, and my impressions after the jump…
SO MUCH AWESOME:
– Dyson! An entry from Alex “haowan” May into TIGS’ very own Procedurally Generated Content competition. Extra awesome.
– Snapshot! Turns out this one’s actually made by Kyle Pulver, creator of BONESAW and Verge, winner of the recent Commonplace Book Competition.
– Cletus Clay! True creator of Platypus Anthony Flack’s clay-mation magnum opus. (Anthony, I haven’t seen you around in a while! This was such a pleasant surprise.)
– The Graveyard! Another somber and inventive game from TIGS allies Tale of Tales. (And another IGF nomination!)
– Cortex Command! Will this be the year the excellent Cortex Command gets its IGF dues?
– Night Game! Nifflas’ most ambitious project yet. (See also: WADF, Knytt, Knytt Stories)
– Blueberry Garden! This game looks so lovely I almost can’t stand it.
Congrats again! To all the nominees. (I’m sure I’m missing something.)
WTF?:
– PixelJunk Eden? Isn’t that game, like, already out on PSN? I thought that would be against IGF submission rules… or at least the spirit of the competition.
– You Have To Burn The Rope? Hahaha — wait, really?
Update: Check out Kian’s response. I found it genuinely touching. Games like YHTBTR getting nominated may be a blessing in disguise — it means you can work from unadulterated creativity, even on a relatively small scale, and still get noticed. That is a good thing! (Thanks, Simon!)
– Goo!? Mondo Nation? Solar Plexus? Just a few awesome and likely awesome games without a nomination. (I’d venture to say there are at least a couple spots these games could have filled…)
DISCUSS.