San Francisco, Calif. - Minecraft , Swedish developer Mojang's 3D world-building sandbox title, was a big winner at the 13th Annual Independent Games Festival, earning the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game and the community-voted Audience Award.
Other Independent Games Festival award recipients included Frictional Games' psychological horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which took home awards for Technical Excellence and Excellence in Audio, as well as the sponsor-supported Direct2Drive Vision Award.
Independent developer Messhof received the $5,000 Nuovo Award --which honors abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which "advances the medium and the way we think about games"--for his two-player art game, Nidhogg.
QCF Design's short playtime dungeon crawl adventure Desktop Dungeons earned the award for Excellence in Design. The Excellence in Visual Art award was won by Gaijin Games' retro-psychedelic
BIT.TRIP RUNNER.
Finally, the award for the Best Student Game went to the Myst-like abstract adventure game
FRACT, from the University of Montreal. Best Mobile Game was awarded to Ratloop's unique "line-of-sight" puzzler
Helsing's Fire.
Organizers would like to thank this year's kind supporters of the IGF, including Crytek (Platinum Sponsor), Microsoft (Gold Sponsor), LucasArts (Gold Sponsor), Direct2Drive (Distribution Partner), OnLive (Hardware Platform Sponsor), Transgaming (Platform Sponsor), DigiPen (Student Showcase Platinum Sponsor), ENJMIN (Student Showcase Gold Sponsor), and Westwood College (Student Showcase Gold Sponsor). The IGF offers finalists both global exposure and over $50,000 in cash prizes to each year's winners.
"This year's record number of entrants was of some of the highest quality we've yet seen in the festival," says IGF chairman Brandon Boyer. "Congratulations to all the winners, who continue to raise the bar for what independent games can achieve. We're all excited to continue showcasing the best in independent games, at the games industry's highest-profile annual event."
The IGF awarded the following games as winners of the 13th Annual Awards:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($20,000)
Minecraft, by Mojang
Nuovo Award ($5,000)
Nidhogg, by Messhof
Excellence in Visual Art ($2,500)
BIT.TRIP RUNNER, by Gaijin Games
Excellence in Audio ($2,500)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games
Excellence in Design ($2,500)
Desktop Dungeons, by QCF Design
Best Student Game ($2,500)
FRACT, by University of Montreal
Technical Excellence ($2,500)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games
Best Mobile Game ($2,500)
Helsing's Fire, Ratloop
Audience Award ($2,500)
Minecraft, by Mojang
Direct2Drive Vision Award ($10,000)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games