Baba is You, Night in the Woods and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy dominate IGF Awards nominations

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) has unveiled the list of finalists for its 20th awards ceremony, taking place on March 21st during GDC.

They are seven prizes up of grabs: Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design and Narrative, the Nuovo Award (which is “given to the game title that makes the jurors think differently about games as a medium”), the Best Student Game and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

There were nearly 600 entries for this year’s awards, IGF revealed, that “were distributed to a diverse set of expert jurors from across the industry for final consideration.” 

Among the finalists, Hempuli’s Baba is You is the most nominated title, with a total of four nominations: Excellence in Design, Best Student Game, Nuovo Award and Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Infinite Fall’s Night in the Woods was nominated three times (Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Visual Art and Excellence in Narrative), as is Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Design and Nuovo Award). 

The winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize will receive a cash prize of $30,000 (around £25k), while winners in the other categories will each receive $3,000.

The IGF Awards will be hosted by Trent Kusters, who co-founded Armello studio League of Geeks and is a board member of Australia’s Freeplay Independent Games Festival. The ceremony will take place at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center and will be followed by the Game Developers Choice Awards.

In 2017, winners of the IGF Awards included Blendo Games’ Quadrilateral Cowboy (Seumas McNally Grand Prize), Hyper Light Drifter,  Gonner and Ladykiller in a Bind.

Here’s the full list of finalists:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

• Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Bennett Foddy)
• Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)
• West of Loathing (Asymmetric Publications)
• Into the Breach (Subset Games)
• Heat Signature (Suspicious Developments)
• Baba is You (Hempuli)

Excellence in Visual Art 

• Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)
• Cuphead (StudioMDHR)
• Echo (Ultra Ultra)
• Luna (Funomena)
• The Gardens Between (The Voxel Agents)
• Chuchel (Amanita Design)

Excellence in Audio

• Tormentor X Punisher (E-studio)
• Cuphead (StudioMDHR)
• Vignettes (Skeleton Business)
• Rain World (Videocult)
• Uurnog Uurnlimited (Nifflas Games)
• Celeste (Matt Makes Games)

Excellence in Design

• Into the Breach (Subset Games)
• Shenzhen I/O (Zachtronics)
• Wilmot’s Warehouse (Richard Hogg, Ricky Haggett, Eli Rainsberry)
• Baba Is You (Hempuli)
• Uurnog Uurnlimited (Nifflas Games)
• Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Bennett Foddy)

Excellence in Narrative 

• Tacoma (Fullbright)
• Attentat 1942 (Charles University and Czech Academy of Sciences)
• Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (Dim Bulb Games)
• Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)
• Butterfly Soup (Brianna Lei)
• Tooth and Tail (Pocketwatch Games)

Nuovo Award

• Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Bennett Foddy)
• Tarotica Voo Doo (TPM.CO Soft Works)
• 10 Mississippi (Karina Popp)
• A Mortician’s Tale (Laundry Bear Games)
• Cosmic Top Secret (Klassefilm)
• Everything Is Going to Be OK (Nathalie Lawhead)
• Baba Is You (Hempuli)
• Kids (Playables)

Best Student Game 

• IO Interloper (Dang)
• Don’t Make Love (Maggese)
• Penny Blue Finds a Clue (DigiPen Team Cactus Curse)
• We Were Here (Total Mayhem Games)
• Baba Is You (Hempuli)
• Guardian of the Gears (DigiPen Team Studio 76)