Venba leads the nomination pack, with A Highland Song, Cocoon and more in hot pursuit
The Independent Games Festival awards - aka: the only awards that areactually worth paying attention to- have announced the finalists for their 2024 cohort, and wouldn’t you know it, there are lots of RPS-endorsed games in there, lemme tell ya.
Cooking adventureVenbaleads the pack with a total of four nominations, but it’s closely followed byCocoon,A Highland Song,Mediterranea Infernoand1000xResist, all of which have scooped three noms apiece.
The IGF Awards is always one of my favourite times of the year, as it’s consistently done great work highlighting interesting games and the hidden gems that might have flown under your radar.
I’m particularly pleased to see some of mypersonal favs from 2023make the cut here (helloCobalt Core,The Wreck, and an honourable mention forLet’s!
Revolution!).
As always, though, the winners for each category will be selected by a jury of game developers, and announced during the Game Developers Conference on March 20th.
Here’s the full list of nominees:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Honorable Mentions:
Chants of Sennaar (Rundisc/Focus Entertainment), Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Brent Arnold),Goodbye Volcano High(KO_OP), In Stars and Time (insertdisc5/Armor Games Inc),Rhythm Doctor(7th Beat Games, indienova),Tchia(Awaceb/Kepler Interactive),The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood(Deconstructeam/Devolver Digital)
Best Student Game
A Day With Mochi (San Felicete Studio/Rubika Supinfogame), Barkane: The Folds of Calamity (Chase O’Brien & VGDev), Birds Aren’t Real: The Game (USC Games), Cyberside Picnic (Michael Luo/Cathode Radiator), Entangled (Fibula Studio), Lime Juice (Benbees), Re:Fresh (Merge Conflict Studio)
Excellence in Audio
Anthology of the Killer (Thecatamites, Tommy Tone, A. Degen), El Paso, Elsewhere (Strange Scaffold), Let’s!
Revolution!
(Antfood, BUCK/Hawthorn Games), Planet of Lana (Wishfully/Thunderful Publishing), Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Summerfall Studios/Humble Games)
Excellence in Design
20 Small Mazes (FLEB), Peaks of Yore (Anders Grube Jensen/TraipseWare), Price of Flight (WATERBOX), Timberborn (Mechanistry)
Excellence in Narrative
Goodbye Volcano High (KO_OP), Saltsea Chronicles (Die Gute Fabrik), Slay the Princess (Black Tabby Games), Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Summerfall Studios/Humble Games), The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)
Excellence in Visual Arts
Honorable Mentions
30 Birds (RAM Games, Ram Ram, Business Goose Studios/ARTE France), Chants of Sennaar (Rundisc/Focus Entertainment), Goodbye Volcano High (KO_OP), NIDUS (Caleb Wood), SLUDGE LIFE 2 (Terri Vellmann, DOSEONE/Devolver Digital)
Nuovo Award
BlueSuburbia (alienmelon), goodbye.monster (Monster Team), In Stars and Time (insertdisc5/Armor Games Inc), Nour: Play With Your Food (Terrifying Jellyfish/Panic), The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (Deconstructeam/Devolver Digital)
The final IGF award, meanwhile, is the Audience Award, which you canvote for right now, up until January 31st.
The list of nominees includes all the games that made it to finalist status this year, so if you want to show some love to your particular favourite this year, ensure you submit your vote before the deadline.
