IGF Award Winners

By: Derek Yu

On: March 12th, 2010

Former IGF Awards host Andy Schatz (pictured above) got to take the stage again tonight, only this time it was to accept both the Seumas McNally award and the Excellence in Design Award for his 4-player co-op stealth game Monaco. Other winning games included the long-lost Limbo, which won awards for Visual Art and Technical Excellence, Closure, which won Audio, and cactus’s Tuning, which won the Nuovo Award.

You can view the entire show here.

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

• Joe Danger
• Monaco
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Visual Art:

• Limbo
• Owlboy
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shank
• Trauma

Excellence in Audio:

• Closure
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shatter
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Design:

• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard For Gravity
• Cogs
• Miegakure
• Monaco
• Star Guard

Nuovo Award:

• A Slow Year
• Closure
• Enviro-Bear 2000
• Today I Die
• Tuning

Technical Excellence:

• Closure
• Limbo
• Heroes of Newerth
• Joe Danger
• Vessel

Student Showcase:

• Boryokudan Rue
• Continuity
• Devils Tuning Fork
• Dreamside Maroon Student Version
• Igneous
• Paper Cakes
• Puddle
• Puzzle Bloom
• Spectre
• Ulitsa Dimitrova

Cactus gave the best IGF acceptance speech I’ve ever heard!

AGS Awards 2009 – Winners

By: Derek Yu

On: March 7th, 2010

The winners of the AGS Awards 2009 have been announced. These are the best Adventure Game Studio games as voted on by the AGS community. The big winners are Zombiecow’s Time Gentlemen, Please! (Best Game, Best Gameplay, Best Dialogue Writing, Best Non-Player Character), Team Effigy’s The Marionette (Best Original Story, Best Background Art, Best Music, Best Tutorial or Documentation), and Ben304’s Shifters’s Box – Outside In (Best Puzzles, Best Short Game). There are a lot of other games and awards, so check out the award page for the full line-up.

Thanks, bicilotti, for the heads-up.

Make Something Unreal Competition Results

By: Derek Yu

On: February 19th, 2010

The “Make Something Unreal” mod competition is over after 2 years! The winner of the competition was The Haunted, a multiplayer survival horror game. The creators of this mod will receive $50,000 and a commercial license from Epic Games for Unreal Engine 3.

According to Alexander Bruce, the creator of Hazard – Journey of Life, all 5 grand prize winners are going commercial. I’ve provided videos of each game and links after the jump.

1. The Haunted (Michael Hegemann)

2. The Ball (Toltec Studios)

3. Angels Fall First (AFF Team)

4. Prometheus (Rachel Cordone)

5. Hazard – The Journey of Life (Alexander Bruce)

Good Causes

By: Derek Yu

On: February 10th, 2010

A couple of really cool organizations could use some help:

1. Gamma IV – The fourth iteration of the popular experimental game showcase/dance party, is headed to GDC this year (with over 150 submitted games!). Kokoromi, the show’s organizers, have started a Kickstarter project to help pay for the new venue and hardware for the event. All proceeds will go toward the event and backers can receive a number of sweet goodies donated by other indies (games, GDC passes, soundtracks, comics, etc.).

2. Giant Robot – This might seem slightly out of place, as Giant Robot is an indie Asian pop culture magazine and not an indie game magazine, but GR has hosted a number of fantastic game galleries, and is helping realize LA Game Space, a non-profit “game lab” that seeks to involve children in Los Angeles with game-making and game-makers. The magazine’s creators, Eric and Martin, are asking for donations to help offset the rising cost of print. Again, there is the possibility of getting some great donation gifts if you help out.

Even if you’re not interested in donating, you should check out what these guys are up to and see if it interests you!

Assemblee Competition: Results!

By: Derek Yu

On: February 7th, 2010

The results of the Assemblee Competition are in! The winner of Part Two is Ivan Safrin for Bitworld, a really slick action-oriented roguelike that was made in Ivan’s own development framework, Substance (still under-wraps). He made use of a number of people’s work from Part One: Oddball, Oryx, Rynen10k, Blot, Stian Stark, Saros, BigLon. A hearty congrats, dude!

As you can see here, it was a pretty close competition, with a lot of great entries. I noticed quite a few entries made it on to 1up’s 101 Free Games of 2010, among other places. Here are the top ten finishers (with brief and inadequate synopses):

1. Bitworld 72 votes (7.9%) – slick 2d/3d roguelike_
2. Dungeons of Fayte 63 votes (6.9%) – co-op action/RPG_
3. Realm of the Mad God 57 votes (6.2%) – massively multiplayer fantasy_
4. Mr. Kitty’s Quest 51 votes (5.6%) – explorey action adventure game_
5. BirdyWorld 38 votes (4.2%) – Zelda-like where players create the world as they explore_
6. Backworld 33 votes (3.6%) – platformer about painting_
7. Tiny Crawl 33 votes (3.6%) – streamlined room-based RPG
8. s h i n e 32 votes (3.5%) – survival horror
9. The King, the Queen and the Jester 29 votes (3.2%) – first person dungeon crawl
10. Great Dungeon in the Sky 27 votes (3%) – platform game with many characters

Please check out the full list of Assemblee games if you haven’t already. Lots of gems in there.

The winner of Part One was Oryx, for his Lo-Fi Fantasy Tileset, which was used in many a game (including Bitworld). As stated before, all of the art and music for Part One is now available (image-heavy) for you to use in your own (non-commercial) projects. They have been released by their creators under a Creative Commons license.

TIGForums mod and Pokemans-lover extraordinaire Melly also held a Box Art Competition after Part Two, which turned out some more cool stuff.

I loved this competition. I think it definitely proved that a two-part competition can be very successful. Logistically, I’m going to have to do more planning for large volumes of entries. I was really unprepared for all the awesome that was going to come in, and that led to some delays. Thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations to everyone who finished artwork, music, or a game!

Mod DB’s Indie Games of 2009

By: Derek Yu

On: February 5th, 2010

Natural Selection 2 was voted Indie Game of the Year by the members of Mod DB. According to developer Unknown Worlds, the above video reveals “the first game footage of the skulk, marine, gorge, command station, the sentry and a marine base chock full of marine toys”.

The other games honored are Wolfire’s Overgrowth, 0 A.D. (an open-source ancient history RTS), FOnline: 2238 (a pretty amazing-looking free-to-play Fallout MMORPG), and Platinum Arts Sandbox, a free, open-source 3D game creation program. Really cool stuff. I need to pay closer attention to Mod DB, apparently!

By the way, for those of you who were curious about the results of the NS2/Overgrowth Preorder Promo that happened last month, Wolfire’s provided a postmortem. And for those of you who were curious about Wolfire’s John Graham, Wolfire’s John Graham’s beard, and more importantly, Wolfire’s John Graham’s beard’s color, check out this video. Warning: it’s hot!

IGF Mobile Finalists Announced

By: Derek Yu

On: January 26th, 2010

The finalists for IGF Mobile 2010 have been announced:

Best Mobile Game Design:

• MiniSquadron (Studio FungFung, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Glow Artisan (Powerhead Games, DSi)
• Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Honorable mentions: Ancient Frog (Ancient Workshop, iPhone/iPod Touch), Globulos Party (Globz, DS), Mind Wall (Robinson Technologies, iPhone/iPod Touch).

Achievement In Art

• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (superbrothers + capy + jim guthrie, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Guerrilla Bob (Angry Mob Games, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Zombie Pizza (Appy Entertainment, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Honorable mentions: Tilt: An Adventure In 1.5 Dimensions (XEODesign, iPhone/iPod Touch), Ancient Frog (Ancient Workshop, iPhone/iPod Touch, Minigore (Mountain Sheep, iPhone/iPod Touch).

Technical Achievement

• Stair Dismount (Secret Exit, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• SCVNGR (SCVNGR, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Tumbledrop (Starfruit Games, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Honorable mentions: Dawn Of Heroes (Wicked Studos, DS), Aera (ichromo, iPhone/iPod Touch), iPixel (Hecticus Software, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Audio Achievement

• Lilt Line (different cloth, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• MuBlip (para9, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Zombie Pizza (Appy Entertainment, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Honorable mentions: MelodyBloxx (Beatshapers, PSP Minis), Earth Dragon (levitylab, iPhone/iPod Touch), iBlast Moki (Godzilab, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Best iPhone Game

• Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Drop7 (Area/Code, iPhone/iPod Touch)
• Hook Champ (Rocketcat Games, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Honorable mentions: Minigore (Mountain Sheep, iPhone/iPod Touch). Pocket God (Bolt Creative, iPhone/iPod Touch), Doodle Jump (Lima Sky, iPhone/iPod Touch).

IGF Mobile Best Game
Finalists will comprise the winners of the five above categories, to be announced on Monday, February 8th.

Congrats! I’m working on another iPhone game round-up right now, too.

Assemblee Competition: VOTING!

By: Derek Yu

On: January 20th, 2010

Part two of the Assemblee Competition has wrapped up, the entries from both parts have been compiled, and voting has begun! For those of you who have forgotten (or are now joining us), Assemblee was started two months ago. In the first part, people entered artwork and music that could be used in a game to enter in the second part. Only the graphics and music made for the competition was allowed, although they could be modified in-game.

73 games were made for part two, and you can view the games here, or vote for them here. There are a lot of neat games in there of every type – there were even two MMOGs submitted! Have fun!

170+ (!!!) people submitted art and music for part one, and you can view samples of everyone’s work here (warning: very very image-heavy), and vote for them here. All of this work is being released under a non-commercial Creative Commons license. You may use this work for your own projects so long as you agree to the license. Oh, and make sure you look in a creator’s actual thread if you like their work – there may be more inside (like different file format options).

That’s really a staggering amount of great work done in two months’ time, ladies and gentlemen. Be proud! Another successful compo behind us and so much to look forward to in the rest of the year! Cheers!

2010 IGF Finalists: Main Competition

By: Derek Yu

On: January 4th, 2010

The results are in. Your main competition finalists for 2010 are:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

• Joe Danger
• Monaco
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Visual Art:

• Limbo
• Owlboy
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shank
• Trauma

Excellence in Audio:

• Closure
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shatter
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Design:

• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard For Gravity
• Cogs
• Miegakure
• Monaco
• Star Guard

Nuovo Award:

• A Slow Year
• Closure
• Enviro-Bear 2000
• Today I Die
• Tuning

Technical Excellence:

• Closure
• Limbo
• Heroes of Newerth
• Joe Danger
• Vessel

Congratulations to all the finalists! Now… DISCUSS.

Assemblee: Part Two

By: Guest Reviewer

On: December 6th, 2009

Greetings citizens of Tigville! I am Lord Andy of Whitshire. Duke Derek is tending to important matters in the shires of Mossmouth, and asked me to deliver this news in his stead:

“Our cup hath overfloweth with an amazing amount of awesome entries to Part 1 of Assemblee competition. But the journey is long, and we must persist. For ”http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9600.0">Part 2 now awaits brave adventurers.

To assist ye in your task, I, Duke Derek, have linked to resources on the Part 2 page which shall aid in collecting the materials required for building your game.

And so I send ye forth to now assemble. Good luck young ducklings.

-Duke Derek of Tigsourcia"

I trust ye all know what to do…

DESIGNERS AND PROGRAMMERS, ARE YE READY?!!