IGF Finalists Announced

The CMP Game Group, which manages events such as Game Developers Conference, has announced the list of 2006 Independent Games Festival finalsts. The award ceremony for the winners will take place at the 7th Annual Independent Games Festival during Game Developers Conference next March. This year's categories are Innovation in Game Design, Technical Excellence, Innovation in Visual Art, Innovation in Audio, Best Web Browser Game, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for the overall winner.

All finalists are eligible for the IGF 2006 Audience Award. Each eventual award winner in these categories will receive a prize of $2,500, with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize being worth $20,000, and all finalists will be demonstrating their titles on the IGF Pavilion at GDC 2006 in San Jose next March, where awards will be handed out. [Please note - the other finalist announcements (Mod Competition finalists, Student Showcase winners) will occur on January 15, 2006.]

Darwinia, which is up for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Innovation in Game Design, Technical Excellence, and Innovation in Visual Art, was recently announced to be distributed via Valve's Steam service. Most of the other games are playable by following their links from the IGF website; some are freeware and some are shareware. Members of the judging panel occupy a wide range of professions throughout the games industry, with members from studios such as Nihilistic, Vicarious Visions, Criterion, and Red Storm, as well as indie developers such as Chrono Logic and Metanet, and various journalists. Games honored in last year's IFG include The Behemoth's Alien Hominid, which managed to secure a traditional publishing deal and end up on store shelves, and Reflexive's Wik and the Fable of Souls, which should be available on Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 this month.