By Jim Rossignol on December 11th, 2011 at 11:52 am.
The very important #indieVisibilty awards ceremony took place in London last night, organised by SizeFiveGames, officiated by OneLifeLeft, and with awards selected by IndieGames and “Rock, Paper, Shotgun”. You can see the full list of the awards distributed below, including Best Minecraft, Nicest Man, “best attempt to do what mainstream devs will not”, and Notch’s game of the year.
Well done to all those involved!
IndieGames.com Strategy GOTY
Frozen Synapse – Mode7IndieGames.com Platformer GOTY
Explodemon – Curve StudiosIndieGames.com Adventure GOTY
I Fought the Law and the Law One – ben304IndieGames.com Arcade GOTY
Scoregasm – Charlie’s GamesIndieGames.com RPG GOTY
Project Zomboid – Indie StoneIndieGames.com GOTY
Minecraft – MojangMost at one with nature
Proteus from Twisted TreeRudest-Sounding
Vertex Dispenser by Michael BroughBest Auralgasms
Eufloria by Omni SystemsMost Fun in the Toilet
Super Spike Dislike from JayenkaiThe Rob Fearon Award for having all the ideas and not leaving any for anyone else
Honeyslug for Frobisher SaysRockPaperShotgun best weird ambient rambling music thing
Proteus – TwistedTreeRockPaperShotgun best use of the Unreal engine
Waves – Squid In a BoxRockPaperShotgun best spaceship combat game
Stellar ImpactRockPaperShotgun best attempt to do what mainstream devs will not
Xenonauts- GoldhawkRockPaperShotgun best co-operative experience
At a Distance – Terry CavanaghRockPaperShotgun best game of the year, best story, best doctors, best scene featuring a rabbit that makes you cry, and so on
To The MoonRockPaperShotgun best use of a dead cat, 2011
Binding of Isaac – Edmund McMillenBest Placeholder Art
Proteus – Twisted TreeBest Glowing Lines
Frozen Synapse – Mode7Loneliest Room
Kairo – Richard PerrinBest Minecraft
Minecraft – MojangNicest Man
Alex TuttyExcellence in Character Design
Thomas Was Alone – Mike BithellThe “Why the fuck is this free?” award for hating money
Stealth Bastard- Curve StudioNotch’s Game of the Year
“It hasn’t been released yet, but the game that’s inspired me the most in the last twelve months is Proteus by Ed Key and David Kanaga. It’s a wonderful game about exploring and understanding. Not much is explained, and not much happens, but the style works amazingly well, and it’s full of atmosphere and personality. It’s affected how I do game design from now on. Using small tools to convey big messages that might not even be there is a wonderful thing.”
11/12/2011 at 12:05 Casimir Effect says:
Sorry to see Spacechem not get a bit of love but then there wasn’t a puzzle game award, and that’s all it really has (no graphics, sound or story to speak of).
Well done to all the winners though. Makes me happy to know I’ve still got things like Frozen Synapse and Eufloria tucked away to play, and To The Moon is something I’ll definitely be getting. The indie scene is fantastic these days.
11/12/2011 at 15:23 Richie Shoemaker says:
Curious that RPS sponsored a space combat award and not one for, say, fantasy adventure. Also a great thing; because, well, SPACE COMBAT!
Also, space chem-bat.
11/12/2011 at 12:10 pupsikaso says:
Wow, I haven’t even heard about 80% of these games. They’ve not been covered by RPS, have they? What website should I visit to get more indie-specific coverage?
11/12/2011 at 12:20 Jim Rossignol says:
We’ve covered everything on that list. Try using the search function. Alternatively: read RPS more.
11/12/2011 at 12:41 S Jay says:
IDEA: put links to the RPS article(s) for each game.
11/12/2011 at 13:15 MichaelPalin says:
ANOTHER IDEA: Put links to the sites of the games.
11/12/2011 at 13:17 Jim Rossignol says:
IDEA: It’s Sunday, I could take a day off!
11/12/2011 at 13:23 Tim Smith says:
Jim’s having a bad day.
11/12/2011 at 13:33 Buckermann says:
Hahahahaha, nice joke Jim.
Now get to work and put the damn links in!
11/12/2011 at 15:13 thedosbox says:
Another Idea! enter game name into your favourite Orwellian monitoring engine. Heck, you don’t even need to type it in if you’re a firefox user.
11/12/2011 at 22:48 Acosta says:
“Work, work for me you lazy videogame journalist, you work for me!, you can eat your sandwhiches only because I am generous enough to visit this page, so work and entertain me!”.
I hope that you had a magnificent day off Jim. And don’t put the links.
11/12/2011 at 12:11 Navagon says:
Quite a few there I haven’t even heard of. Time to check them out, methinks.
“RockPaperShotgun best weird ambient rambling music thing”
:D
11/12/2011 at 12:13 Heliocentric says:
This is a “good thing”(TM) a nice list of indies worth checking out. I will be forwarding this to some of my slightly too mainstream friends.
11/12/2011 at 12:26 BenLeng says:
This “RockPaperShotgun”-Website that is mentioned sounds interesting. I will have to check it out.
11/12/2011 at 12:27 mindle says:
It’s a shame One Chance didn’t get a mention :/
11/12/2011 at 13:08 Tim Smith says:
Amen to that.
11/12/2011 at 12:30 Fwiffo says:
Well, this would explain why my prototype Gaming-Credometer exploded when I waved it in London’s direction last night.
I was hoping to corner the indie dev blogging scene with that dark device too…
11/12/2011 at 12:31 MuscleHorse says:
I imagine there’s a lot of people googling ‘Stealth Bastard’ from this article as it appears to have borked the site.
11/12/2011 at 12:34 Nighthood says:
I wish I could have watched this instead of the VGAs.
11/12/2011 at 14:31 Hoaxfish says:
Even if I couldn’t watch this… I wish I hadn’t watched the VGAs. It was terrible.
11/12/2011 at 17:40 Voon says:
I’m glad that I didn’t even watched the VGAs!
Seriously, I didn’t even know when they were going to air, yesterday. Too depressed by GSC’s departure…
11/12/2011 at 18:26 Ruffian says:
Yeah the VGA’s were pretty stupid. It was like video games for dummies or something. Tune in if you want to hear a bunch of D list celebrities drone on about modern warfare 3 all night! Come watch all the games get the awards you’ve seen them get in every publication on the subject up until now!!! Though I guess it is nice to see the creators of some of the games getting some recognition, seeing as actors and film directors constantly get to do those sorts of things (awards shows)
11/12/2011 at 12:35 MondSemmel says:
No love for Space Chem or Terraria? (Presumably I’m forgetting some more.) :sadface:
And I cannot understand what anyone sees in Eufloria. That game felt like the greatest waste of time ever – everytime I did something, I then had to wait literally several minutes before my move had been processed. Yes, it’s supposed to be relaxing, etc. – but that irritated me to no end.
11/12/2011 at 12:52 randomnine says:
SpaceChem was nominated for IndieGames.com GOTY. Terraria was nominated for Best Minecraft and, I think, IndieGames.com RPG GOTY.
They just got unlucky with the categories, really, and there were a hell of a lot of good indie games this year.
11/12/2011 at 12:59 LTK says:
Yeah, I can imagine other games not having much luck in the category ‘Best Minecraft’.
11/12/2011 at 19:50 Llewyn says:
@randomnine: There were indeed; certainly I can think of more indie games that I’ve enjoyed this year than AAA games, which is both delightful and depressing. But I can’t help thinking that Spacechem’s failure to win anything reflects a failing, or at least a minor shortcoming, in the choice of categories.
11/12/2011 at 12:40 DeathCarrot says:
Good stuff, I’ll be checking out the few I haven’t heard of before.
@MondSemmel: Yeah SpaceChem and Terraria are my favourites this year. Dungeons of Dredmor is also good and also absent.
11/12/2011 at 12:45 danthat says:
Terraria, Dungeons and SpaceChem all got nominations. The list here is just the winners :)
11/12/2011 at 13:30 Strange_guy says:
Dungeons is good and all, but when you look at free roguelikes you can it isn’t anything really special and award deserving.
11/12/2011 at 12:59 MichaelPalin says:
You wanna kill me or something, RPS? You have to stop throwing dozens upon dozens of games at me every month and tell me how cool they are. Can’t you just be like other gaming sites and speak only about AAA games or indie games, but only when they become so big that they cannot be hidden anymore.
Ok, I’ll pick I Fought the Law… (Only because of the title), Proteus, maybe Kairo, To the Moon, Honeyslug and maybe Stealth Bastard, but not one more. Maybe Eufloria…, wait, that is not the one from Amanita, well, I’ll check it out anyway. And thankfully Alex Tutty seems to be a person, one less to play then.
Are you happy?
11/12/2011 at 13:05 Lambchops says:
Definitely some very worthy winners.
A few games there that slipped past my radar (I probably noticed them and forgot to actually get round to playing the damn things) so will check them out.
Oh and since it’s all the rage to do a bit of grumbling surely since half the categories were clearly made after a few pints there could have at least been a “most brain hurty” category for Spacechem.
11/12/2011 at 13:39 wu wei says:
Project Zomboid? Does it count if the game is still in alpha? What happens if it radically changes between now and release? Can it be GO2Y? Is it even an RPG?
11/12/2011 at 17:33 Mctittles says:
I think minecraft has been winning awards for years now. That’s the loophole for releasing a game before it’s finished. No bad press for bugs; get awards continuously. I see no downside :).
11/12/2011 at 14:10 Hoaxfish says:
No Bastion? … is Bastion actually Indie (what with Warner Brothers publishing it)?
11/12/2011 at 16:34 Matt-R says:
Wondering exactly the same, though I’m not at all clued in on this indie lark so I’m a bit boggled if i’m honest.
11/12/2011 at 17:43 Voon says:
BASTION! And I thought they were indie even if they had a publisher to sell their game. Hmmm….
11/12/2011 at 19:09 Dr I am a Doctor says:
WB had to be their publisher, because Microsoft’s policy on indie games states that they have to have a big name publisher.
11/12/2011 at 19:38 PleasingFungus says:
My understanding is that Bastion was finished before they got a publisher.
11/12/2011 at 21:02 ThTa says:
Bastion was funded and produced independently. They only signed up with WB to get on Xbox Live Arcade, because Xbox Live Indie Games gets next to no sales. (And they found that games sold under the name of big publishers sell better on Steam, as well)
And it not winning any awards here is somewhat disappointing. It’s definitely my indie GOTY. (If not overall GOTY)
That said, it’s got plenty of popularity, as is: I can see other indie games needing the added visibility.
11/12/2011 at 14:10 Inigo says:
Why are they all sweating?
11/12/2011 at 14:13 Hoaxfish says:
they’re not sweating, it’s freshly squeeze indie juice
11/12/2011 at 15:08 westyfield says:
It’s pure liquid creativity.
11/12/2011 at 15:32 bastard_samurai says:
A woman happens to be in the same room.
11/12/2011 at 15:41 Hatsworth says:
No Jamestown? Blasphemers!
11/12/2011 at 19:05 randomnine says:
Jamestown was nominated for IndieGames.com Arcade GOTY.
11/12/2011 at 20:04 Jad says:
Oh man, just saw a link on Dan Marshall’s Twitter feed to the Jamestown dev’s proposed acceptance speech, it’s absolutely hilarious:
http://www.sizefivegames.com/forum/index.php?topic=4270.msg58770#msg58770
11/12/2011 at 16:39 Urthman says:
Was Nitronic Rush ineligible, or did you guys somehow completely forget about the “Best Indie Stunt Racing Game of the Decade” award?
(Probably ineligible for the “Why Is This Free?” Award because we know why, Digipen.)
11/12/2011 at 17:19 Lewie Procter says:
If memory serves me, it was a nominee for that very award.
11/12/2011 at 16:40 Protome says:
Wait, Eufloria? So the games didn’t need to come out THIS year to be in the running then?
Since Eufloria came out two years ago <.<
11/12/2011 at 19:06 RobF says:
It was released on PSN a month or so ago so it got a pass.
11/12/2011 at 16:51 Nova says:
All the talk about Proteus is a bit annoying if us normal folks aren’t able to play it. Reminds me of Nidhogg. I hope it doesn’t share its fate.
12/12/2011 at 23:15 Ed says:
Proteus is definitely going to be a normal downloadable purchasable game (or ambient vague music exploration playground toy wordless story chillout thing, whatever you prefer!) as soon as I can get the first proper version finished. Currently I’m thinking February next year – it’s hard to schedule because I’m doing it in my spare time.
I’m acutely aware of the problem of not being able to release when things (nice, touching things!) are being written about it.
PS: These awards night was really amazing fun, really touched by the prizes, even though they were very silly indeed. All awards should be as silly and portable as golden teabags.
11/12/2011 at 17:40 Tyrone Slothrop. says:
What? 2011 isn’t over yet. These awards are a sham a evidently a sick Lenin-esque perversion of a heretofore noble egalitarian system of nomination and distribution of praise, since adopted and informing a global hegemonic system of oppression and marginalisation of year-end releases like Gunpoint. Fuck you Jim Rossignol! If only as personal foil and façade, ultimately sympathetic as a patsy for a fascist and detestable mode of award-presentation.
11/12/2011 at 18:07 Mike says:
That link to Rock Paper Shotgun is broken, just takes me back to the previous page.
11/12/2011 at 18:14 Tusque D'Ivoire says:
So RPS just went and told everyone what their game of the year was? To The Moon? Is there a mainstream game this year that can be able to top To The Moon? Or is the mystery of the 24th window lifted?
11/12/2011 at 19:04 zeekthegeek says:
#indieVisibilty End Of Year Indie Awards
Try reading the article title again :P
11/12/2011 at 18:32 Big Murray says:
Nothing for VVVVVV?
11/12/2011 at 19:51 Jad says:
VVVVVV came out last year.
11/12/2011 at 19:55 Big Murray says:
… but it’s so awesome, can’t we give it a “Still Playing It Since Last Years Awards” award?
11/12/2011 at 20:01 Squirrelfanatic says:
Eufloria came out in 2009, so this shouldn’t be an issue.
11/12/2011 at 20:47 Jim Rossignol says:
That was the award for the PS3 version of Eufloria.
12/12/2011 at 08:23 Squirrelfanatic says:
Ah, didn’t see that.
11/12/2011 at 20:37 Skabooga says:
I am curious about what the other nominees for “RockPaperShotgun best game of the year, best story, best doctors, best scene featuring a rabbit that makes you cry, and so on” were.
11/12/2011 at 21:03 SquidInABox says:
I’ve dropped the price of Waves by 50% to celebrate this most prestigious event. Sale only last until midnight tomorrow though!
Shameless linkage: http://www.wavesgame.com
11/12/2011 at 21:03 Craig Stern says:
I laughed out loud at the “Best Minecraft” category. Nice.
11/12/2011 at 23:02 Metalhead9806 says:
Just tried proteus.
I don’t know how early in development this version that i have is but if this is the game notch is talking about he’s been digging too many holes in Minecraft.
I’m hoping its just my build.
12/12/2011 at 23:27 Ed says:
That version is pretty old, but if you hate that then maybe you’ll hate the one Notch has played as well!
I don’t know if I should post this reply but I’m going to anyway! BAM!
11/12/2011 at 23:47 DrGonzo says:
Hang on a minute. I’ve seen those people before doing stand up in Nottingham.
Quite embarrassing and awkward, but surprisingly good and sexy!
When will we get to see RPS on stage shitting themselves trying to make us giggle?
12/12/2011 at 06:27 OJSlaughter says:
This awards amuse me! Thank god that indie developers don’t take things too seriously :)