As we anticipated, quirky 2D adventure Blueberry Garden, by Erik Svedang, was the winner of this year’s Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Read the details of the other winners below. (Dyson was robbed! Boo!)
Innovation Award: Between
Excellence in Visual Art: Machinarium
Excellence in Audio: BrainPipe
Technical Excellence: Cortex Command
Excellence in Design: Musaic Box
Audience Award: Cortex Command
Congratulations to Data Realms, Cortex Command is totally ace. I’m also a little surprised that CarneyVale Showtime didn’t snag anything. Oh well, well done to everyone who was nominated. It was another bumper year for great indie games.
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Are we going to get a list of all the ones you chaps think we should play?
Aside from the ones that won awards, natch.
Well at least Dyson managed to secure release over Steam. I guess.
Oh the glory of Cortex Command! That Zombie Cave video was from an alternate time line where people decided 3-D was a bit naff.
Zeno Clash deserved the Visual art award, machinarium was nothing special.
@Nighthood: strongly disagree, I’m very happy Machinarium won the Visual art award myself.
God, Machinarium is gorgeous, can’t wait to get it.
Machinarium doesn’t seem to break boundaries much, I think Zeno Clash is a LOT more brave in terms of art.
Also, bloody keyboard not recognising the second “O” in my name. T_T
if “You have to Burn the Rope” would have won something I would have unleashed INTERNET RAGE.
I must remember to buy Dyson as I can’t stop playing the Demo; has anyone got it and does it involve multiplayer or smarter AI in the full release?
Dyson isn’t for sale yet. The latest “Demo” is all there is.
Hooray for Sweden! I’ve only really played Cortex Command of those and that game is brilliant. Machinarium *drools*
ALEX!? RUDOLF!?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I like how the Musaic Box download is actually a downloader that downloads the downloader that downloads the actual game. I kid you not.
Ian: “Are we going to get a list of all the ones you chaps think we should play?
Aside from the ones that won awards, natch.”
I think you’re right. they should make a series of articles like the games coming in 2009.
Osmos or whatever it’s called also got an award.
Zeno Clash was robbed.
Machinarium is very pretty, but it seems like it just tries a bit too hard, if you know what I mean, which is never something I feel when looking at Zeno Clash.
Regardless, congratulations to all the winners. Well done.
Blueberry Garden looks gorgeous, but I still have no idea what the game is actually about.
what is this “dyson” you all speak of ?
Feel really proud to have Svedäng as a game-design teacher at times like these. *proud/brag*
I really hate when someone enters a game into this that they’ve never released any real information about, much less anything we can play. And then it wins and it feels like they’re hiding some secret special thing all to themselves.
Then some forever time later it actually comes out and you’re like “oh, is that all?”. At least that’s how I felt about CPD doing the same thing last year (though at least that had something of a tech demo around).
dyson is single player real-time risk, where you can sacrifice troops to gain additional production capacity, and troops built from different asteroids feature different characteristics.
unless they’ve made a colossal number of improvements since the last time i had a play, i don’t quite see how there’s enough there to make it worth buying. although the music is lovely.
Dyson: http://www.dyson-game.com/
Amazing game that grew out of the TIG Source “Procedural” competition IIRC. I always thought the game deserved more attention and surprisingly, said attention now arrived with a long delay.
That Dan Tabar has got a smokin’ bod!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7962983.stm
Dan Tabar interfaces with his computer by way of a Bowflex.
@Wedge: I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who gets annoyed at all these indie games winning awards when they haven’t even been released yet. STOP GETTING PRIZES IF I CAN’T PLAY YOU YET, DAMMIT!
if you were here you could play :)
I think Between was the wrong choice. But Blueberry Garden – absolutely. We had a peek at the IGF release for issue two of Another Castle and I was really thrilled with it. Really captivating.
I just want a release date on blueberry garden, although I now realize I should just forget it, I have a feeling it won’t be for a while. Also, I wish dyson would have won, but oh well.