Cart Life and FTL win big at the Indie Games Festival

I would have given all the awards to Kentucky Route Zero, but I guess this is fair too

The Game Developers Conference currently going on in San Francisco is home to the Independent Games Festival. A couple of months ago, the finalists were revealed. Last night, the winners were revealed.

Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life took home Best Independent Game and its subsequent $30,000 prize, as well as the Best Narrative Award, and the Nuovo Award “for abstract and unconventional games.” Subset Games’ unforgiving space strategy title FTL: Faster Than Light also took home multiple pieces of hardware in the form of the Excellence in Design Award and the cꦐrowd sourced Audience Award.

My personal horse in this race, Cardboard Computer’s brilliant Kentucky Route Zero, took home the award for Excellence in Visual Art. A full list of winners can be found after the break. Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and look at both 🌞the list of winners and the list of nominees, and try and play some of the games on the list if you haven’t already. I spent quite a bit of time touring the IGF finalists section of GDC today (you can expect some video coverage of the games throughout the week by Spencer Hayes), talking with various nominated developers and playing their games. They’re pretty much all great in one way or another.

Play cool games. Do it.

Excellence in Visual Art ($3,000)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)

Nuovo Award ($5,000)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)

Excellence in Audio ($3,000)
140 (Jeppe Carlsen)

Excellence in Narrative ($3,000)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)

Technical Excellence ($3,000)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)

Best Student Game ($3,000)
Zineth (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Audience Award ($3,000)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)

Excellence in Design ($3,000)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)

Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($30,000)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)