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.”
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.
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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.
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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?
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We’ve covered everything on that list. Try using the search function. Alternatively: read RPS more.
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IDEA: put links to the RPS article(s) for each game.
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ANOTHER IDEA: Put links to the sites of the games.
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IDEA: It’s Sunday, I could take a day off!
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Jim’s having a bad day.
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Hahahahaha, nice joke Jim.
Now get to work and put the damn links in!
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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.
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“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.
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Quite a few there I haven’t even heard of. Time to check them out, methinks.
“RockPaperShotgun best weird ambient rambling music thing”
:D
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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.
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This “RockPaperShotgun”-Website that is mentioned sounds interesting. I will have to check it out.
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It’s a shame One Chance didn’t get a mention :/
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Amen to that.
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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…
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I imagine there’s a lot of people googling ‘Stealth Bastard’ from this article as it appears to have borked the site.
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I wish I could have watched this instead of the VGAs.
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Even if I couldn’t watch this… I wish I hadn’t watched the VGAs. It was terrible.
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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…
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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)
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, I can imagine other games not having much luck in the category ‘Best Minecraft’.
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@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.
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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.
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Terraria, Dungeons and SpaceChem all got nominations. The list here is just the winners :)
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Dungeons is good and all, but when you look at free roguelikes you can it isn’t anything really special and award deserving.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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 :).
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No Bastion? … is Bastion actually Indie (what with Warner Brothers publishing it)?
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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.
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BASTION! And I thought they were indie even if they had a publisher to sell their game. Hmmm….
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WB had to be their publisher, because Microsoft’s policy on indie games states that they have to have a big name publisher.
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My understanding is that Bastion was finished before they got a publisher.
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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.
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Why are they all sweating?
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they’re not sweating, it’s freshly squeeze indie juice
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It’s pure liquid creativity.
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A woman happens to be in the same room.
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No Jamestown? Blasphemers!
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Jamestown was nominated for IndieGames.com Arcade GOTY.
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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
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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.)
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If memory serves me, it was a nominee for that very award.
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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 <.<
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It was released on PSN a month or so ago so it got a pass.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That link to Rock Paper Shotgun is broken, just takes me back to the previous page.
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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?
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#indieVisibilty End Of Year Indie Awards
Try reading the article title again :P
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Nothing for VVVVVV?
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VVVVVV came out last year.
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… but it’s so awesome, can’t we give it a “Still Playing It Since Last Years Awards” award?
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Eufloria came out in 2009, so this shouldn’t be an issue.
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That was the award for the PS3 version of Eufloria.
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Ah, didn’t see that.
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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.
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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
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I laughed out loud at the “Best Minecraft” category. Nice.
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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.
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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!
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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?
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This awards amuse me! Thank god that indie developers don’t take things too seriously :)
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