Pope's inventive and evocative game, centered around the protocols and moral challenges of working as an immigration agent under a dictatorial regime, was also honored for its achievements in Narrative and Design during the event.
Capybara Games co-founder Nathan Vella served as master of ceremonies for the event, which featured appearances from IGF chairman Brandon Boyer and videos from the comedic minds behind the Hey Ash Whatcha Playin'? video series.
Other top honors at the IGF included the award for Excellence in Visuals Art, which went to Gorogoa, the charming and ingenious puzzle game from Jason Roberts.
Gorogoa presents a lovingly hand-illustrated world that playfully transcends dimensions to create a brain-teasing series of interconnected puzzles.
The winner of the Best Audio award was DEVICE 6, a puzzle game transposed into a literary and aural narrative in which the typography of text itself forms the game map. The wholly unique gameplay experience culminates in an engrossing visual and audio gameplay experience that defies conventional classification.
This year's Nuovo Award, which honors abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development, was given to Luxuria Superbia, a musically and visually resplendent title that uses the player's touch to stimulate in-game sensations of pleasure and joy. Absent any characters or underlying narrative, the game is focused entirely on the experience of traveling through a series of tunnels to make them "feel good” and affect their colors and plumage through the player's tactile inputs.
The award for Best Student Game went to Risk of Rain, the intense action platformer with rogue-like elements from University of Washington development team Hopoo Games. The game presents over 100 items from which players can put together the tools needed to find the teleporter back home.
Finally, the community-driven Audience Award was given to The Stanley Parable, a game that explores, mimics and parodies established gameplay conventions via a pervasive omniscient narrator who cleverly narrates a single man's quirkily monotonous existence.
The 2014 IGF Award winners are as follows:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope
Excellence in Visual Art
Gorogoa by Jason Roberts
Nuovo Award
Luxuria Superbia from Tale of Tales
Excellence in Audio
DEVICE 6 from Simogo
Excellence in Narrative
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope
Best Student Game
Risk of Rain from Hoppo Games
Audience Award
The Stanley Parable by Galactic Cafe
Excellence in Design
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope
The Independent Games Festival was established in 1998 by the UBM Tech Game Network to encourage the rise of independent game development and to recognize the best independent game titles, in the same way that the Sundance Film Festival has honored the independent film community.