IGF 2008 Main Competition Finalists Announced

[Matthew]

Hot off the presses!



The IGF organizers have announced the Main Competition finalists for the 2007 Independent Games Festival, from a field of 173 entries, with nominations led by titles including 2D Boy's physics construction game World of Goo and Invisible Handlebar's music-adapting puzzle racer Audiosurf.

The Independent Games Festival website now includes a full list of finalists, including screenshots and links to videos and demonstration versions where available.

As well as World Of Goo and Audiosurf, which were both nominated for three prizes, including the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize category, other multiple nominees included 2D/3D platform title Fez, physics-heavy steampunk flying combat title Hammerfall, and Guitar Hero controller-using action game Fret Nice.

The full list of finalists for the IGF Main Competition, all of whom will be showing their games at the IGF Pavilion during Game Developers Conference in February 2008, are as follows:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

* Audiosurf
* Crayon Physics Deluxe
* Hammerfall
* Noitu Love 2: Devolution
* World of Goo

Best Web Browser Game:

* Globulos.com
* Iron Dukes
* Tri-Achnid

Design Innovation Award:

* Battleships Forever
* Fez
* Fret Nice
* Snapshot Adventures: Secret Of Bird Island
* World Of Goo

Excellence in Visual Art:

* Clean Asia!
* Fez
* Hammerfall
* Synaesthete
* The Path

Excellence in Audio:

* Cinnamon Beats
* Fret Nice
* Audiosurf
* Clean Asia!
* OokiBloks

Technical Excellence:

* World of Goo
* Audiosurf
* Goo!
* Axiom: Overdrive
* Gumboy Tournament

In addition, an initial set of sponsors for the 2008 Independent Games Festival Festival have been announced, with Gleemax.com revealed as the Platinum Sponsor this year, alongside Sony and Microsoft as Silver Sponsors and DigiPen as Platinum Student Showcase Sponsor.

The winners of each of these categories, including an Audience Award for which every finalist is eligible, will be announced at the IGF Awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday, February 20th 2008 at Game Developers Conference, when nearly $50,000 in cash prizes will be given away.


View the full list of finalists here: http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html

[Dan MacDonald]

Awesome, looks like it's going to be a great competition this year! There's several games in that list I'm rooting for, all great indie games.

[jonaswills]

Congrats to all the finalists, these games look amazing! :)

[Adrian Cummings]

Some great stuff in there!

[Chris Evans]

Congrats to the Finalist! :)

[cyrus_zuo]

Woot! Go Axiom :)

Looks like there are 4 games that can be downloaded and 3 played online (one online is an 'interactive preview'). So outside of the perfect 3/3 web category there are 4 of 17 finalists that can be played currently :(.

I wish there were more :). I want to play the games and worry every year that the results lead to the impression that Indie = unfinished game. I worry that when unfinished games win awards (as has happened each of the 5 years I've been covering the IGF) it makes Indie feel less legitimate. (However, since it happens every year, maybe I'm just wrong. Perhaps unfinished is part of that nebulous Indie definition :) )

[Ryan Clark]

Congrats to all the finalists! I'm stoked to try these games out, too. Can't wait until they're available.

I do agree with Russell's comments, though... it's a shame that the games aren't always finished/available, but I'm not sure how that could really be prevented. If you require entry of a "finished" game, what's to stop them from claiming it's finished, but then continuing to work on it? Or, would you require that the games be "available" to the public, finished or not? But then how do you deal with unfinished/unreleased games for XBLA and other platforms... tricky!

The current IGF format obviously works quite well, and the games are getting better and better each year, so perhaps we should just keep on keeping on :)

[jonaswills]

I agree with what's said about game completion, my team has entered the student competition and our game is probably one the few available that seem more "complete" than a lot of other entrants(We'll be selling real soon now). I'm not sure how the judging is done but I'm certainly hoping a game with more polish and closer to a complete version is given credit for that extra work, especially in the student showcase which a lot of games have some great concepts but seem to be just that and not a complete game... from my first impression(can't really call it experience) it seems the longest part of making the game is turning a good concept into a fun playable well polished game.

[vjvj]

Awesome, thanks for the heads up!

Always very inspiring to see this.

[ChrisP]

I'm not sure how the judging is done but I'm certainly hoping a game with more polish and closer to a complete version is given credit for that extra work, especially in the student showcase which a lot of games have some great concepts but seem to be just that and not a complete game...

Heh, me too. I actually am selling my game Mayhem Intergalactic already (see signature), though I'm still hard at work on improving it. I'm very interested to see what the judges think of it. (It's in the student competition.)

Your game looks interesting, though I'm always worried about how difficult "indirect movement" (I just made that term up) platformers are to control. I've seen some shockers in the past. Hopefully you've avoided that problem; I haven't actually downloaded your game yet, so I don't know whether you have or not. Good luck, anyway. Two weeks left! :)


from my first impression(can't really call it experience) it seems the longest part of making the game is turning a good concept into a fun playable well polished game.

Couldn't agree more. Polish took so much more time than I thought it would. I had a "complete playable game" after three months, but making something halfway-saleable took another year and a half (including long breaks enforced by university terms). And 6 months after that, I still haven't completed it to my satisfaction.

[Game Producer]

Ahh, these are excellent looking games. Thanks for letting us know - and good luck to all finalists.

[vjvj]

I would like to state for the record that Noitu Love 2 looks rad.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XK37gN7kCwQ