San Francisco - The IGF Mobile organizers have announced the finalists for the inaugural Independent Games Festival Mobile from a field of more than 50 entries, with nominations led by cellphone game titles including Punch Entertainment's social networking game
Ego and Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab's waste disposal strategy puzzle game
Backflow.
The Independent Games Festival Mobile Web site,
www.igfmobile.com, now includes a full list of finalists. As well as
Ego and
Backflow, both nominated for the Innovation in Mobile Game Design category and the $10,000 IGF Mobile Best Game award, other multiple nominees included Capybara Games' food-chain based puzzler
Critter Crunch, the technologically remarkable mobile RTS
Steam Iron: The Fallen, and Nintendo DS drawing-RPG
Drawn to
Life.
Other notable nominees for 2008 prizes include nominees for the Innovation in Augmented Design Award, presented by Nvidia, which is IGF Mobile’s Platinum/Founding Sponsor. They include 3D Lawn Darts, which uses the device camera to simulate throwing a dart,
Anna's Secret, a GPS driven, location-based learning adventure game based in the city of Weimar, Germany, and
PhoneTag Elite, a location-tracking mobile game of "hide-and-seek."
Alongside finalists in the 10th annual IGF Main Competition and Student Showcase, the finalists for the IGF Mobile Competition will be showing their games at the IGF Pavilion during CMP’s Game Developers Conference (GDC).
GDC, the industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of interactive entertainment, takes place February 18 through 22, 2008, at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center.
The IGF Mobile ceremony will take place during 2008’s GDC Mobile, with the winners also highlighted at the main Independent Games Festival Awards during GDC 2008.