A Maze has announced the 25 games that have been nominated for the upcoming 2018 A Maze Awards. All in all, the nominees will vie for six different awards, though games are not restricted to a certain category at the time of their nomination.
A Maze is set to announce the six overall winners at the organization’s International Games and Playful Media Festival in Berlin event April 25-29. Past grand prize winners include games like Everything and Cosmic Top Secret.
This year, the six award categories include the Most Amazing Game Award for best overall game, Human Human Machine Award for best local multiplayer game, Long Feature Award for best complex and immersive game, Digital Moment Award for a game with mechanics that express feelings through an interactive medium, the Collider Award for a title that fosters interdisciplinary productions, and an Audience choice award.
“Over the last years, we are constantly fostering authorship, artistic expression and the courage of creating off-the-grid views of gaming and narratives,” said festival director Thorsten S. Weidermann in a statement. “Once again, games aren’t just products of entertainment, games are works influenced by the knowledge, perspective and experience of the developer, and especially this year we are seeing a manifestation of a clear direction that is inspired by an inclusive, playful and engaging digital culture“,
A full list of this year’s awards, along with descriptions and past winners, can be found on A Maze’s website. A full list of the 2018 nominees can be found below while winners will be announced on April 27.
- Accounting+ (Crows Crows Crows)
- Anamorphine (Artifact 5)
- Attentat 1942 (Charles University, Czech Academy of Sciences)
- Black Room (Cassie McQuarter)
- Data Mutations (AAA)
- Don’t Make Love (Maggese)
- eCheese Zone (Seemingly Pointless)
- Fountain (Phillipp Stollenmayer)
- Genital Jousting - Story Mode (Free Lives)
- Homescape (Yotam Rozin)
- Home Machina (Arte France)
- Hypnospace Outlaw (Tendershoot)
- Knights and Bikes (Foam Sword)
- Levedad (Solimporta)
- Like Roots in the Soil (Space Backyard)
- Liquorice (Dlareme)
- Meryll Wants a Cookie (Lost again)
- Museum of Symmetry (The National Film Board of Canada, Paloma Dawkins)
- Sloppy Forgeries (Jonah Warren)
- The Norwood Suite (Cosmo D)
- The Zium Museum (Michael Berto)
- Tuned Out (Shallow Games)
- Untitled Goose Game (House House)
- Walden, a game (USC Game Innovation Lab)
- Witchball (S.L. Clark)
A Maze also lists the following 9 games as titles receiving honorable mention:
- character.animation.synth (Eran Hilleli, Giori Politi)
- Isometric Epilepsy (Ludopium)
- Nothing Happens VR (Michelle and Uri Kranot)
- NSFWARE (Pierrec)
- Ooblets (Gumberland)
- Path to Mnemosyne (DevilishGames)
- Pie in the Sky (Matthew Keff)
- Spoons ( La Générale de Production)
- Where Thoughts Go: Prologue (Lucas Rizzotto)