10th Annual IGF Finalists Announced

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: December 3rd, 2007

Congratulations Petri, Joakim, Kyle, Edmund, Phil, Aubrey & Tommy, cactus, and all the finalists! Yer goin’ to IGF!

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
Goo!
Audiosurf
Axiom: Overdrive
Gumboy Tournament

[This post was brought to you through a joint collaboration between BMcC and Derek. We love you all.]

UPDATE: Brandon’s thoughts actually in the extended!

Wow, what a great selection of games this year! Lemme break down a few of my thoughts by category:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

Audiosurf, huh? That’s one I didn’t see coming — matter of fact, I hadn’t even heard of it before IGF! But I think the two biggest contenders for the Big Prize are Crayon Physics Deluxe and World of Goo. I haven’t played either (You listening, Petri and Kyle?), but from what I’ve seen and heard, they seem to be incredibly polished and original. And fun!

Of course, I would also love to see Noitu Love 2 come away with the win. The fact that an oldschool, pixely 2D game could make it to the top spot is a testament to its pure awesomeness. I mean, look at it! Play Chalk! You know it’s gonna be dynamite.

Best Web Browser Game

Tri-Achnid would be great. Iron Dukes looks like good clean fun. Globulos… is certainly browser-based!

I… I don’t know much about web games. :’(

Design Innovation Award

Oh man! This is a big category. I think Fez has the most potential at this point, especially as more and more gameplay elements get woven in to the 2D/3D mechanic… The mind just boggles! It all comes down to gettin’ it done.

The rest are real strong contenders, natch.

Excellence in Visual Art

Heck yes, I’m so happy cactus got a nomination. Let alone two! He is so unapologetically indie… I can’t wait to meet him in person at GDC. (If you’re reading this — save up and practice that English! We’re going to party.)

Fez is still awesome to behold (for enjoy).

And even though they create a bit of ruckus on the forums, you gotta admit The Path looks wonderful. :)

Excellence in Audio

As I understand it, Audiosurf plays to your music. So, like, shouldn’t its audio rating vary depending on the judge’s musical tastes and mood? I guess they all listen to pretty good stuff, huh? :P

I’d personally like to see more “traditional” games in this category. But I can’t honestly be surprised by an audio game taking it.

Technical Excellence

Battle of the Goos! Seriously. Who will emerge victorious? Tommy’s certainly got a whole heck of a lot of technical trickery tied into his game… But I’ve heard tell that World of Goo is remarkably well put together. This is gonna be an interesting decision.

Games That Didn’t Make It This Year

Matt was telling me at Gamma that there are always a number of games that could of made it, but just… didn’t. He said many of the slots keep shuffling even up to the last day. Some games that didn’t make it this year, but are certainly worthy of mention:

Cortex Command! This game is really good, and is gonna be bloody great. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if it came away with an award next year… Word is the first commercial version is coming out soon!

Harvest: Massive Encounter! This has already won awards in Sweden (its country of origin), and looks quite impressive. I’m going to cover it real soon, don’t worry. ;)

Gish 2! This was a big contender, and is sure to be a top-tier title once it’s done. Maybe the IGF version was too early? More likely it’s just an example of what Matt was talking about.

Penumbra: Overture! I’m positive this was inches away from a Technical Excellence nod…

The Zoo Race! This game could and should have won every award. Even awards not part of this competition.

So… What do you all think? Who’s going to win? What surprised you? What didn’t make it, but deserved to? What made it, but didn’t deserve to? DISCUSS.

Posted in IGF / GDC

Jimbob

Wow, well done peeps, especially Joakim, that’s a great nomination!
th15

WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo
Pigbuster

Congratulations to all of you guys!
http://www.getmagi.com TeeGee

Congratulations guys! Good job. And gratz to you th15 :D. I still remember when BF was just an early WiP on GMC. And now it’s an IGF finalist! Cool!
fish

oh yeah.
OH YEAH.
OH YEAAAAAAH!

what a stellar line-up!
hardcore.
its gonna be so great to hang out with all of you fine, fine gentlemen.

also, WTF am i doing on that pic?
seriously.
Alec

getting ready for some ass-slappin’
haowan

Congratulations and best of luck to all the finalists!
Mathieu

Congrats to all finalists!

Too bad our game was only played once by only one member of the jury. I don’t know what the exact review process was, maybe it’s normal…
Tim

Congratulations guys. :)
konjak

!!!!
fish

its like what petri was telling me.
this is gonna be a BRUTAL party.

BRUTAL.
Tommunism

I fell down when I read Goo! in Technical Excellence. Seriously, I hit the ground. So happy, this is what it must feel like to be in love……
Alan Gordon

I must say that I am very happy to se Fret Nice in here. That game is way more fun than it has any business being.
fartron

World of Goo, Goo!, Globulos, Gumboy Tournament… You can literally watch the zeitgeist focus on fluid physics.
http://2dboy.com Kyle Gabler

Holy crap woowoOWW!!! Congrats, I can’t wait to meet you guys.
cactus

I hope alcohol is allowed. My english doesn’t hold up well while I’m tense and nervous :)

Would be quite awesome to get to meet some of you guys. I really did not expect this…
http://www.wyrdysm.com th15

Oh yea cactus, I’ve been trying to contact you. As fellow Game Maker users, what do you say we talk a little about how we can work better with Game Maker.
fish

yeah seriously…can we bring tons of booze to the IGF pavilion?

seriously.

i want to.

lets.

lets show how em indies to it: drunk.
cactus

@th1: Feel free to send me a pm on yoyogames or my forum or whatever if there’s anything you want to discuss :)
Alec

yeah, better than getting high and putting yourself at the mercy of the owls
toastie

It’s not an acceptance speech until you throw up or pass out.
http://www.shotbeakgames.za.net/niche Tr00jg

Wow! A spectacular line-up! Good luck to all!

I feel jealous… *Gets back to work*
Edmundo

That’s pretty sweet, though I believe the “best web browser game” category is kind of bogus. All the other categories have nothing to do with platforms, except for this one. As nice as tri-achnid and iron dukes are, they’re just games running on a web page… they could get their chance at other categories as well. Globulos on the other hand is more of a web game because there are some online capabilities.
the_dannobot

Congrats to all the finalists!
[email protected]

Audiosurf looks amazing.

Battleships forever has a bit of a steep learning curve though.
http://www.igf.com/ Matthew

“As nice as tri-achnid and iron dukes are, theyâ€™re just games running on a web pageâ€¦ they could get their chance at other categories as well.”

Just to be clear, web games *are* scored on all categories. A web game could have been a finalist in any of the categories. It’s just that we feel web browser games are also important enough to have their own scoring category.
Mazapán

Ahh fantastic! Special congratulations to Joakim & the Goo-boys! Too bad Harvest didn’t make it :(
Seol

“WARNING! A HUGE BITCHY POST IS APPROACHING FAST”

I must say I’m fairly dissapointed in some of the judging. In visual excellence, “Clean Asia” is downright ugly, and “Synaesthete” is a bloody neon wireframe lightshow, which is something I recon got old after Tempest 2000. And what pisses me off the most is the technical excellence category, with far too many 2d games. By default any 3d game is several orders of magnitude more complex from a technical point of view than any 2d game, no matter how gimmicky ther 2d physics engine is. It seems that the likes of “Penumbra” are too mainstream and not alternative enough despite them being a display of programming prowess far above their 2d indie artsy counterparts.

Rant over and out.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Ah, ignorance…
http://www.shotbeakgames.za.net/niche Tr00jg

Try doing anything in the technical excellence category and you’ll see its not a piece of cake. I can’t even start to comprehend how I’ll do Goo!’s stuff…
http://www.ludoko.com ChrisFranklin

Technical excellence and technical complexity are two different concepts.
Tommunism

“By default any 3d game is several orders of magnitude more complex from a technical point of view than any 2d game”

Seol, that statement shows that you really have no clue what you are talking about. Just because you extend a game into a 3rd dimension doesn’t mean that it is instantly more complex. I would go into a whole rant about how accomplishing real time interactive 2D liquid physics is much much MUCH more difficult than setting up a stencil buffer in D3D…but it would be so far over your head you’d have to stand on the stick that’s wedged up your ass to even begin to understand it at it’s level. So…yea..go…fuck off or something and let the Technical Excellence people enjoy their technical excellence. Douche.
konjak

Seol, I wouldn’t say my game is very alternative so I don’t think that is part of judging…
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Haha, dang, that was harsher than I expected! (For the record, I asked Tommy to respond to Seol’s post.)

Chris makes an excellent point, by the way!
Seol

Ah, plenty of patronizing responses, let’s do this.

First I must say that I’d rather keep these post civil, I think any personal attacks are unwarranted, as my post was more or less light hearted (by acknowledging it was a rant and making old arcade game references) and it was not my intention to troll.

“Technical excellence and technical complexity are two different concepts.”

This I could agree with, since at the IGF website there’s no definition of “technical excellence” so I guess it’s open to interpretation.

Tommunism, I’m not an ignorant when it comes to programming, and I honestly consider that a 3d engine with per pixel lighting, stencil shadows and skeletally animated characters, all of it integrated with a full blown 3d physics engine is more complex than a low resolution grid 2D fluid simulation. And again, it’s not my intention to offend you.
Tommunism

Well you did offend, and I felt it necessary to retaliate. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so harsh, but I do know how hard and long I worked on this. For the record though, my “low resolution grid 2D fluid simulation” runs over 2000 particles at a capped 60FPS at 1920 x 1080 while doing per pixel lighting and normal map generation…so yea.
http://www.shotbeakgames.za.net/niche Tr00jg

Manhugs anyone?
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Not yet. An internet battle is raging.
Tommunism

Nah, I’ll manhug Seol if he acknowledges that even though he didn’t mean to offend…he did and he obviously he knew he would by posting such nonsense.
Tommunism

..and he buys me a grape Fanta.
xerus

Indie game drama!
Seol

I guess no cybermanhugs for me then. I ackonowledge I offended you, since that much is quite obvious and for that I’m sorry, but I still stand by my “nonsense”, which wasn’t targeted specifically at your game (and seriously, 2000 particles is lo-res, hardware accelerated particles, be it graphic card, physics card, or even SSE; would get you many more). And if I were to buy drinks it would be beer :P.
fish

3D is one more than 2D!
Tommunism

Ha…again with the low res. Okey dokey, you stand by that.
toastie

Goo does use hardware accelerated particles afaik.
Stwelin

I recognizeify the acknowledgmentity of your offensiveness.
Tommunism

I appreciate your recognizedness and respricatively thank you.
NOT Tommunism

Disregard that, I suck
xerus

HADOKEN.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Oh man, let’s not bring the “NOT” thing back…