Continuing to repeat the tastes of RPS, the Independent Games Festival Awards final evening awarded Return Of The Obra Dinn the Seumas McNally Grand Prize in the course of the Game Developers Conference final evening, with a cheeky Excellent In Narrative award on the aspect too. We declared it our favorite game of 2018 so, y’know, good on ya Ian GF. Correct resolution. The different prizes had been gained by Mirror Drop, Paratopic, Opus Magnum, Black Room, and After Hours, and ooh there’s two I don’t recognise and must try.
Obra Dinn is time-travelling homicide thriller set aboard a cursed ship, made by Papers, Please fella Lucas Pope. It was the one game to win a number of IGF awards this yr, lifted the video game-shaped cups for each the Grand Prize and Excellence In Narrative. It is certainly grand. Gradually figuring out the corpses, determining relationships between characters, and fixing the horrible mysteries is an actual deal with. Also a few of that sealife is, agh, god rattling. Good. See our Matthew’s Return Of The Obra Dinn review for extra and browse our calendar witterings too.
Zachtronics gained Excellence In Design for academical meeting puzzler Opus Magum, which is someway their first IGF award. That sounds so ludicrous I maintain considering “That can’t be right” and re-checking previous winners however no, regardless of Design award nominations for Infinifactory and Shenzhen I/O, plus particular mentions for others, that is the primary. Opus Magnum is is dead good, even for a idiot like me residing vicariously via the elegant options I see friends exhibit via the oh-so-handy GIF exporter.
Excellence In Audio went to Paratopic, and I’m very glad to see this first-person unsettler win one thing. It is very good. I’ll proceed to repeat this: Paratopic is superb.
Perspective-warping puzzler Mirror Drop received the Excellence In Visual Art prize.
The Nuovo Award for boundary-pushing games went to Black Room, a game about falling asleep whereas searching the Internet and drifting across- whoa, this seems good. I had not heard of Black Room, and will definitely look now. And now simply due to its astonishing URL, http://hgjfkdhskjdgturrgehdsbjkfhdsjkahturaytklfdjjfjfff.net/blackroom.html. That’s a hell of a website title.
Annnd lastly, Best Student Game went to After Hours, an FMV game I can’t say I’ve performed both. Must look out for that.
See the IGF site for extra on the winners, the nominees, and the particular mentions. Lots of good games in there.
