The 16th annual Independent Games Festival awards will conclude at the 2014 Game Developer’s Conference in late March, and now we’ve got a full rundown of the event’s finalists. A number of familiar titles are up for awards in one or more categories, including several of Digital Trends’ Game of the Year contenders and winners.
Galactic Cafe’s first-person meta-comedy The Stanley Parable and Simogo’s iOS-exclusive text adventure (but not the way you think) Device 6 are both up for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. They’re joined by Papers Please, Don’t Starve (which is part of the PlayStation 4’s Instant Game Collection for PS Plus subscribers as of this week), Jazzpunk, and Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!” , a stop-motion musical detective game that deserves accolades for its title alone.
The IGF has been giving indie developers and helpful boost since it kicked off in 1999. Notable previous winners include Braid, FTL: Faster Than Light, Minecraft, and World of Goo. All of the winners in the Main Competition portion of the event score a distribution deal with Valve for a Steam release. Finalists get to start voting on the IGF’s Audience Award winner in mid-February and the IGF Student Showcase award winners will be announced later this month.
You should definitely head over to the IGF website to check out the full list of nominees. The site offers basic info up on each games as well as links to official websites and the like. If you ever want to get in on the ground floor of what’s getting in-the-know gamers excited, this is a great place to start.
