Independent Games Festival 2013 finalists announced

Hotline Miami, FTL, and more up for awards

The annual Independent Games Festival will be taking place on March 27 during GDC 2013 and the list of main competition finalists has now been revealed. Pruned from a list of over 580 entries, the nominees here are truly some of the best indie games we’ve played this year.

Up for the Seamus McNally Grand Prize are Hotline Miami, FTL, Cart Life, Little Inferno and Kentucky Route Zero. Also up for a variety of awards in other categories are titles like Space Team, Thirty Flights of Loving, Super Hexagon, and Intrusion 2. 

What’s interesting to note is that all finalists in this year’s competition will have the chance to accept a distribution deal with Valve, so we could be seeing plenty of these titles coming to Steam in the next few months. You can check out the full list of nominees below.

Excellence In Visual Art
Incredipede (Northway Games and Thomas Shahan)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Guacalamelee! (Drinkbox Studios)
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base)
Year Walk (Simogo)

Excellence In Narrative
Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante)
Gone Home (The Fullbright Company)

Technical Excellence
StarForge (CodeHatch)
Perspective (DigiPen Widdershins)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Intrusion 2 (Aleksey Abramenko)
LiquidSketch (Tobias Neukom)

Excellence In Design
Samurai Gunn (Beau Blyth)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth)
Super Hexagon (Terry Cavanagh)
Super Space ______ (David Scamehorn & Alexander Baard/DigiPen)

Excellence In Audio
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Bad Hotel (Lucky Frame)
140 (Jeppe Carlsen)
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
Pixeljunk 4AM (Q-Games)

Nuovo Award
[Designed ‘to honor abstract… and unconventional game development’.]
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Spaceteam (Henry Smith)
Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante)
Bientot l’ete (Tale of Tales)
7 Grand Steps (Mousechief)
MirrorMoon (SantaRagione + BloodyMonkey)
VESPER.5 (Michael Brough)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)