A sometimes-heart-breaking game about food cart workers trying to achieve their dreams was the big winner at the 16th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards.
Cart Life won the Seumas McNally Award for Best Independent Game over the likes of Hotline Miami and FTL: Faster Than Light, netting creator Richard Hofmeier US$30,000 (AU$28,700).
Cart Life also won the Best Narrative Award as well as the Nuovo Award for abstract and unconventional games – “an impressive sweep for a sometimes deliberately obtuse title that was relatively underappreciated before the IGF Awards season,” according to festival organisers.
Hofmeier was humble in his victory, and felt that that his game had its share of accolades already.
"I want it to die, frankly," he told Joystiq. "I can't wait for it to die. People keep resuscitating it."
"I had high opinions of the other nominees and I kind of want to share this with them.
"I feel like I've already overstayed my welcome with this game and I'd like it if maybe some of this esteem and elevation could go to some games that deserve it more.
"I already got so much more out of this game than I ever thought I would. I thought it would just be my friends and me playing this thing. The other games are so well-made," he added.
"It's strange, I still feel like a trespasser. I'll try to get used to it. I'll try."
Subset Games’ acclaimed space strategy title FTL: Faster Than Light was the other multi-award winner, taking out both the Excellence in Design Award and the Audience Award.
Other IGF award recipients for 2013 included Tomorrow Corporation's Little Inferno, a quirky title about burning objects in an “entertainment fireplace”, Cardboard Computer’s surreal magical realist adventure game Kentucky Route Zero, and Jeppe Carlsen's beat-based platformer 140.
The Best Student Game was awarded to third-person high-speed skating game Zineth by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The IGF – which also included a two-day Independent Games Summit as part of the Game Developers Conference – was established in 1998 by the UBM Tech Game Network to encourage the rise of independent game development.
According to its official site, it also aims to recognise the best independent game titles in the same way that the Sundance Film Festival has honoured the independent film community.
Previous Seumas McNally Award winners include Fez (2012), Minecraft (2011), and Monaco (2010), and Limbo, Botanicula, Dear Esther, Spelunky, and Frozen Synapse are all recent IGF award winners.
The full list of 2013 nominees and winners:
Excellence In Visual Art
($3,000)
Incredipede (Northway Games and Thomas Shahan)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Guacamelee! (Drinkbox Studios)
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base)
Year Walk (Simogo)
Excellence In Narrative
($3,000)
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
($3,000)
StarForge (CodeHatch)
Perspective (DigiPen Widdershins)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Intrusion 2 (Aleksey Abramenko)
LiquidSketch (Tobias Neukom)
Excellence In Design
($3000)
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
($3,000)
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', $5,000)
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
($30,000)
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Audience Award ($3000)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Best Student Game
($3,000)
ATUM
Back to Bed
Blackwell's Asylum
Zineth (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
Farsh
Knights of Pen & Paper
Pulse
the mindfulxp volume
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