2010 IGF Reveals Mobile Category Winners, Audience Voting, Award Hosts
2010 Independent Games Festival organizers have revealed the five IGF Mobile category finalists battling it out for Best Mobile Game at GDC, also debuting the IGF Audience award and revealing the hosts for this year's IGF Awards.
IGF Mobile Category Winners
After announcing finalists and honorable mentions late last month, the 2010 Independent Games Festival Mobile has named the category winners that will show their games at GDC and battle for the Best IGF Mobile Game prize.
After battling it out from a field of 170 top-notch entries, winners thus far include Secret Exit's physics-heavy Stair Dismount for iPhone, Powerhead Games' cunning color-based puzzle game Glow Artisan for DSi, and Tiger Style's acclaimed action game Spider for Apple's handheld.
The category winners for the 2010 IGF Mobile competition -- an event that celebrates excellence in games for the iPhone, other cellphone and smartphone OSes, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and other handheld devices -- are:
Best Mobile Game Design:
Glow Artisan (Powerhead Games, DSi)
Achievement In Art
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (superbrothers + capy + jim guthrie, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Technical Achievement
Stair Dismount (Secret Exit, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Audio Achievement
Lilt Line (different cloth, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Best iPhone Game
Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style, iPhone/iPod Touch)
These five outstanding independent handheld games will each win $500 in travel stipends, in addition to their already-awarded Game Developers Conference 2010 All-Access pass for being a finalist.
In addition, their games will also each be playable in a special area at the Independent Games Festival Pavilion on the GDC Expo floor alongside the 30 Main and Student competition finalists, and one of them will win the $2,500 Best Mobile Game award at the IGF Awards during the March 9th-13th event.
IGF Audience Award Opens
IGF organizers have also opened this year's Audience Awards, with members of the public able to vote on all 2010 Independent Games Festival Main Competition finalist games that have (or have had) publicly available versions.
Voting for eligible titles is now open at the IGF Audience Award page, and will stay open until Friday, March 5th at midnight PST, with gamers encouraged to play through the games and pick their favorite via email-verified voting.
IGF Award Hosts
Alongside these two announcements, organizers have revealed that this year's hosts of the Independent Games Festival Awards -- to be held on March 11th in San Francisco's Moscone Center during GDC 2010 -- will be independent developers Kyle Gabler (World Of Goo) and Erin Robinson (Puzzle Bots).
Kyle Gabler is half of 2D Boy, the indie studio behind multiple IGF award winning game World of Goo. He is also one of the freewheeling dandies behind the recently reincarnated Experimental Gameplay Project, which runs monthly design challenges in an ongoing quest to discover as many new forms of gameplay as possible.
Erin Robinson has been making independent games since 2005. Her work has been featured by Boing Boing and PC Gamer UK, and has spoken at multiple conferences, including GDC -- where Heather Kelley and Erin presented the winning design in the annual Game Design Challenge last year. Erin's game Nanobots was a much-lauded indie title, and she is now working on the casual adventure game Puzzle Bots.
The duo will jointly present this year's Independent Games Festival awards in front of thousands of GDC 2010 attendees and indie game fans -- and will be joined by customary introductions and closing remarks from IGF co-chairs and indie developers Matthew Wegner (Flashbang Studios) and Steve Swink (Enemy Airship).
Comments
Congrats to all, and I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to seeing Erin and Kyle up there!
Posted by: Andy | February 8, 2010 7:31 PM
You really have to respect the crap out of Secret Exit. They have been IGF Mobile beasts 2 years in a row.
Posted by: capy_nathan | February 9, 2010 12:56 AM