Winners Will Be Announced March 23 During the Game Developers Conference 2022

SAN FRANCISCO — (BUSINESS WIRE) — January 7, 2022 — Informa Tech, organizers of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2022 have revealed the finalists for the 24th annual awards ceremony of the Independent Games Festival (IGF), the longest running festival, summit and showcase celebrating independent games and their creators. The IGF is part of the Game Developers Conference 2022, which will be held in-person and virtually at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center from March 21 - 25.

Leading the nominations are Inscryption by Daniel Mullins Games and Unpacking by Witch Beam, which have both been nominated for four awards each. Both titles are nominated for the categories of Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Design, Excellence in Narrative and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Inscryption is a genre-bending love letter to video games that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles and psychological horror into a surprising mix. Quite differently, Unpacking is a zen game about the familiar experience of pulling possessions out of boxes and fitting them into a new home, all while learning clues about the life of the person whose belongings are being unpacked.

The other nominees for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize are:

• Cruelty Squad (also nominated for the Nuovo Award) by Consumer Softproducts is a tactical first-person shooter where players are an emotionally dead, combat-substance fueled grunt of Cruelty Squad, a depraved subsidiary company tasked with performing wetworks for its host conglomerate.
• Loop Hero by Four Quarters, a game where players help the brave hero to defeat the Lich that has thrown the world into a timeless loop by wielding an expanding deck of mystical cards that place enemies and terrain to help challenge the hero and, in doing so, strengthen them.
• The Eternal Cylinder (also nominated for Excellence in Visual Art) by ACE Team sees players control a herd of adorable creatures as they explore a strange alien world filled with exotic lifeforms, surreal environments, all while under the constant threat of the Cylinder, a gargantuan rolling structure of ancient origin which crushes everything in its path.
• Unsighted by Studio Pixel Punk is a science-fiction adventure where players’ choices have powerful consequences. As the Automaton Alma, players traverse a vast world in search of hidden passages, powerful weapons and critical tools—all while facing dire decisions in a race against time to save their friends from a tragic fate.

After an initial assessment completed by hundreds of judges, over 400 entries for the 2022 IGF Awards were distributed to a diverse set of expert jurors from across the games industry for final consideration. The juries for each individual category then selected the finalists after playing, discussing and meticulously evaluating them.

The winners will be announced during the Independent Games Festival Awards, taking place at the 2022 Game Developers Conference (GDC) on Wednesday, March 23 (with a simultaneous broadcast on GDC Twitch). The IGF Awards will immediately precede the Game Developers Choice Awards, which recognizes the best games of the year across all sections of video game development. Both the Game Developers Choice Awards and IGF ceremonies are available to watch for all GDC 2022 pass-holders.

The full list of finalists for each category of the 2022 Independent Games Festival, along with "honorable mentions," is as follows:

Best Student Game
Cai Cai Balão (Look Up Games)
Abriss - build to destroy (Randwerk Games eG)
Letter Lattice (Ethan Zarov)
Smalllife (Yueqi Wu)
Nainai's Recipe (Fan Fang, Mai Hou)
Live Adventure (Live Adventure Team)

Honorable Mentions: Astreia's Gift (Femy Nassirou & Hervé Blanchot), There You Are (Funky Dango), The Bleeding Tree (No Input Interactive), dumpling.love (the parks staff), Lysfangha (Baptiste Marsac & Daphne Pauchet-Deloffre), Jivana (Team Jivana), Hook Up (Team Hook Up), Come with Me (Xin Ye)

Excellence in Audio
Toem (Something We Made)
Unpacking (Witch Beam)
Jett: The Far Shore (Superbrothers A/V + Pine Scented)
Mini Motorways (Dinosaur Polo Club)
Sable (Shedworks)
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)

Honorable Mentions: Severed Steel (Greylock Studios), A Musical Story (Glee-Cheese Studios), Death's Door (Acid Nerve), The Vale: Shadow of the Crown (Falling Squirrel), Kena: Bridge of Spirits (Ember Lab), Overboard! (inkle), The Wild at Heart (Moonlight Kids)

Excellence in Design
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
Unpacking (Witch Beam)
Overboard! (inkle)
Strange Horticulture (Bad Viking)
Webbed (Sbug Games)
Midnight Protocol (LuGus Studios)

Honorable Mentions: Loop Hero (Four Quarters), Unsighted (Studio Pixel Punk), Mini Motorways (Dinosaur Polo Club), Card Shark (Nerial), KeyWe (Stonewheat & Sons), Sunshine Heavy Industries (Daisyowl Games)

Excellence in Narrative
Last Call (Nina Freeman and Jake Jefferies)
Neurocracy (Playthroughline)
Closed Hands (Passenger)
Overboard! (inkle)
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
Unpacking (Witch Beam)

Honorable Mentions: Card Shark (Nerial), Norco (Geography of Robots), The Big Con (Mighty Yell), Tux and Fanny (Ghost Time Games), Opus: Echo of Starsong (Sigono), Sable (Shedworks), Blackhaven (Historiated Games)

Excellence in Visual Art