2007 Independent Games Festival Finalists Announced

Author: by Staff

The IGF organizers have announced the Main Competition finalists for the 2007 Independent Games Festival, from an amazing field of 141 entries this year. Nominations are led by Bit Blot's dreamlike, innovatively controlled 2D underwater adventure title Aquaria, which garnered 4 nominations, including one for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. According to a statement: "Other Grand Prize nominees included Queasy Games' cleverly designed abstract shoot-em-up, Everyday Shooter, which grabbed 3 nominations in total - nominees for the top prize were rounded out by Peter Stock's intelligently complex physics puzzle game Armadillo Run, Three Rings' Wild West indie strategy MMO Bang! Howdy, and Naked Sky's Xbox Live Arcade action-puzzler RoboBlitz. Other notable IGF finalists grabbing nominations for design-related innovation include DigiPen-constructed first-person shooter set in a world of blocks (which act as both terrain and weapons!), Toblo, as well as NABI Software's extremely original turn-based ragdoll fighting game Toribash. Elsewhere, Best Web Browser Game finalists include Amanita Design's beautifully drawn adventure title Samorost 2, Visual Art finalists also have a plethora of highlights, including The Behemoth's Xbox Live Arcade title Castle Crashers. Finally, the Excellence In Audio category includes Skinflake's Racing Pitch, in which the player uses a microphone to imitate a car engine in order to power his on-screen vehicle, and Technical Excellence also has a multitude of stand-outs, including Cryptic Sea's physics puzzler Blast Miner and EvStream's multiplayer space title Armada Online." 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 March 2007, are as follows: Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Aquaria - Bit Blot; Armadillo Run - Peter Stock; Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design; RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games. Best Web Browser Game: Bubble Islands - dot-invasion; Gamma Bros - Pixeljam; Samorost 2 - Amanita Design. Design Innovation Award: Armadillo Run - Peter Stock; Aquaria - Bit Blot ; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games; Toblo - Digipen Institute of Technology; Toribash - NABI Software. Excellence In Visual Art: Castle Crashers - The Behemoth; Golf? - Luke Hetherington Company; Aquaria - Bit Blot; RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment; Samorost 2 - Amanita Design. Excellence In Audio: Bone: The Great Cow Race - Telltale Games; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games; FizzBall - Grubby Games; Aquaria - Bit Blot; Racing Pitch - Skinflake. Technical Excellence: Arcane Legions: The Rising Shadow - Slitherine Software; Armada Online - EvStream; Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design; Blast Miner - Cryptic Sea; Bugs Of War - NinjaBee. 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, March 7th 2007 at Game Developers Conference, when more than $50,000 in cash prizes will be given away. (There are also two impending announcements about the rest of the 2007 IGF finalists - IGF Modding finalists will be announced on December 18th, and the IGF Student finalists on January 4th, 2007.)