IGF 2022 nominees include Inscryption, Unpacking, and more

This year’s indie award candidates are pretty stacked

It’s a new year, and the 2022 Game Developers Conference is right around the corner. Which means there’s also a new batch of nominees to compete in the 2022 Independent Games Festival, or IGF, Awards.

The competition this year is strong, as we were not left wanting for good indies to play throughout the last year. And I always enjoy reading over the IGF nominees, because they tend to highlight some cool picks that often go overlooked. Hades and Umurangi Generation were the big winners of last year’s awards, for example, and the 2020 winners included A Short Hike and Heaven’s Vault.

As for the 2022 IGF Awards nominees, there are two games leading the pack in nominations: Inscryption and Unpacking both accrued four category nominations. They’ll be competing with each other in the Audio, Design, and Narrative categories as well as the Grand Prize.

Don’t rule out the competition, though. Some of these, like Cruelty Squad and Unsighted, could be fierce competition. Really, reading down the nominations, it was like a list of games I need to get around to playing, alongside the ones I’ve already been playing.

Here’s the full lineup of nominees for the 2022 IGF Awards:

Seamus McNally Grand Prize

• Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
• Unpacking (Witch Beam)
• Loop Hero (Four Quarters)
• The Eternal Cylinder (ACE Team)
• Cruelty Squad (Consumer Softproducts)
• Unsighted (Studio Pixel Punk)

Nuovo Award

• Memory Card (Lily Zone)
• Okthryssia and Saturnia’s Bureaucratic Adventures (Outlands)
• Space Hole 2020 (Sam Atlas)
• Tux and Fanny (Ghost Time Games)
• Cruelty Squad (Consumer Softproducts)
• Sparkles & Gems (Resnijars)
• Fuzz Dungeon (Jeremy Couillard)
• Cuccchi  (Fantastico Studio)

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)

Excellence in Visual Art

• The Eternal Cylinder (ACE Team)
• Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery (Silver Lining Studio)
• Papetura (Petums)
• Fuzz Dungeon (Jeremy Couillard)
• The Wild at Heart (Moonlight Kids)
• Jett: The Far Shore (Superbrothers A/V + Pine Scented)

Excellence in Narrative

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

Excellence in Design

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

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)

You can find the full list of games and developer bios, as well as honorable mentions for each of the categories, at the 2022 IGF Awards site here.