INDIECADE AWARDS
All nominated (selected) works are eligible for juried awards, irrespective of format or genre.
Award categories include:
IndieCade 2019
Congratulations to the award-winning games and honorees of IndieCade 2019!
Festival 2019 Awards
Europe 2019 Awards
Festival 2019 Awards Ceremony
Watch the full Awards Ceremony hosted by Sarah Elmaleh and Asher Vollmer plua the pre-show hosted by Ian Hinck.
(Awards begin at 54:23)
Your MCs
IndieCade was thrilled to have Sarah Elmaleh and Asher Vollmer back as the IndieCade Awards Masters of Ceremony.
Livestream
Thank you to Ian Hinck of Easy Allies and Sofia Hariz for livestreaming our Awards Ceremony!
Pre-Awards Music
Special thanks to DJ Richard Lemarchand, DJing before and after the Awards show!
FESTIVAL 2019 AWARD WINNERS
Cooperative Design Award
Tick Tock: A Tale for Two
by Other Tales Interactive
Honoring the delicate art and craftsmanship of crafting experiences that require and gain meaning from playing together.
Tick Tock: A Tale for Two is an eerie two-player co-op adventure, band together with your best friend and try to escape a magical clockworld. Communication and collaboration is key!
Procedural Design Award
Blabyrinth
by Sleeping Beast Games
Honoring the craftsmanship of algorithms and procedures that help create innovative and responsive works of interactivity and play.
Blabyrinth is a cooperative escape room that changes every time you play! Explore a mysterious labyrinth. Find cryptic clues, secret passages, solve puzzles, and escape with the treasure.
Tabletop Award
Inhuman Conditions
by Tommy Maranges, Cory O'Brien, & Mackenzie Schubert
Honoring works crafted to be played with words, paper, and objects, leveraging the human imagination as a processor and human companionship as a reward.
From the creators of Secret Hitler and Monster Prom, Inhuman Conditions is a 5 minute, two-player interrogation game that will finally reveal which of your friends have been robots all along.
Location Based and Live Play Award
Ama's Momento
by Awu C., Maryyann L., & Kevin K.
Honoring works which leverage spaces and human bodies in space to create playful, crafted experience.
‘Ama’s Momento’ is a multimedia installation filled with interactive and immersive stories. It is a memory portal which uses virtual reality to creatively document our team’s journey as young storytellers traveling to Taiwan to meet with Ama.
Adaptation Award
When Rivers Were Trails
by Elizabeth LaPensée & The Indian Land Tenure Foundation
Honoring works that reimagine how a well known tale, genre, or system can be explored within the context of play.
When Rivers Were Trails is an Indigenous take on Oregon Trail meets Where the Water Tastes Like Wine set in 1890's at the height of the impact of land allotment.
Narrative Design Award
Neo Cab
by Chance Agency / Fellow Traveller
Honoring the artistry of storytellers innovating the ways that we communicate meaning and play with stories.
Stay human in a world overcome by automation in Neo Cab! Play as Lina, one of the last human drivers on the streets of Los Ojos. Choose your passengers and how you interact, to balance your star rating and your emotional well-being.
Performance Award
The Occupation
by White Paper Games
Honoring the craftsmanship and artistry of vocal and physical performers elevating works of interactivity and play.
The Occupation is a first person, fixed-time, investigative thriller set in North West England created by White Paper Games. You play as a journalist in a systems-driven world where people react to your actions and time is your biggest enemy.
IndieCade Jury Prix Award
Grace Bruxner Presents: The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
by Grace Bruxner, Thomas Bowker, Dan Golding
Honoring the game that impresses and surprises with depth, innovation, and artistry.
A small sloth has been haunted for weeks by a mysterious ghost that nobody can seem to track down. There's a mystery afoot, and the only one who can solve it is the renowned investigator known simply as The Detective. Finding clues and questioning suspects is just part of the job for such an experienced frog, but this case is a tough fly to catch.
Innovation in Experience Design Award
Moncage
by Dong Zhou & Yijia Chen
Honoring works which transport and transform the player through a skillfully crafted experience.
Moncage is a visual puzzle game. A world is trapped inside a mysterious cube, and each face of this cube will display a different scene. The player will need to rotate this cube and find out the connections among the scenes and thus unravel the secrets of the inner world.
Innovation in Interaction Design Award
HOT SWAP: All Hands On Deck
by Peter Gyory & Clement Zheng
Honoring the craftsmanship and innovation behind unique interaction, hardware, and system design.
HOT SWAP: All Hands On Deck is a two player cooperative arcade survival game were players must swap out and trade inputs on their controllers survive the onslaught of approaching enemy ships.
IndieCade Grand Jury
Dicey Dungeons
by Team Dicey Dungeons
Recognizes the game among our 59 nominees bringing together the best qualities of this year’s festival.
Dicey Dungeons is, at its heart, a deckbuilding RPG - you fight monsters, find better loot, and level up your hero - but with one important twist: dice rolling! Wait, no, come back! It's better than it sounds!
A recognition of the spirit of Night Games 2019:
Night Games Award
Nightmare Temptation Academy
by Lena NW & Costcodreamgurl
Nightmare Temptation Academy is a dating-simulation/choose your own adventure/roleplaying game that is also a rap musical. The game is set in high school in an alternate universe at the end of the world.
FESTIVAL 2019 HONOREES
The Bernie DeKoven Big Fun Award: Come Out and Play
This annual honorary award was created in collaboration with Bernie DeKoven, to honor his legacy and to recognize individuals or organizations significantly furthering the field and impact of new, big, and physical games.
Come Out & Play is an annual festival of street games that turns New York City & San Francisco into a giant playground. The festival provides a forum for new types of public games and play by bringing together players eager to interact with the world around them and designers producing innovative new games and experiences.
http://www.comeoutandplay.org/about/
The Game Changer Award: The Organizers of the Game Devs of Color Expo
The Game Changer Award celebrates an individual who has impacted the gaming landscape in a significant way, a positive disruptor who has has brought a paradigm shift to our community.
Chris Algoo, Shawn Allen, Brian Carr, Brian S. Chung, GJ Lee, & Catt Small
Game Devs of Color Expo is an inclusive games expo and conference creating a new normal in games by putting creators of color at the forefront, showing off their games, building conversations, and pushing games forward as an art form.
FESTIVAL 2019 CHOICE AWARD WINNERS
Developer Choice Award
Patrick's Parabox
by Patrick Traynor
The IndieCade Developers Choice Award is voted on by nominated IndieCade Festival developers.
Patrick's Parabox is a puzzle game about playing with recursion and infinities by pushing boxes into and out of each other. Each box contains its own 2-dimensional space that other boxes can enter and exit, creating ever deeper layers of boxes-within-boxes. This unique system gives rise to mind-bending puzzles which require a whole new way of thinking.
IndieCade Choice Award
Kroma
by Carol Mertz, Kai Karhu, Francesca Carletto-Leon, & Temitope Olujobi
The IndieCade Choice Award is voted on by media and audience attending IndieCade Festival.
See strategy gameplay in a whole new light. Kroma is a stylish strategy game in which 2-3 players capture territory by blending colors on top of a custom-made backlit lightboard, resulting in a unique composition of hues and shapes. By layering transparent plastic pieces of cyan, yellow, and magenta, players create their “target” secondary color, score points, and create a colorful collaborative art piece through competitive play.
EUROPE 2019 AWARD WINNERS
Tabletop Award
Dialect: A Game about Language and How it Dies
by Thorny Games
Honoring works crafted to be played with words, paper, and objects, leveraging the human imagination as a processor and human companionship as a reward.
Dialect is a tabletop roleplaying game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost. The game’s core spark comes from gradually building up elements of language among players, who gain fluency in their own dialect over the course of play.
Innovation in Experience Design
The Aluminum Cat
by Escape Character
Honoring works which transport and transform the player through a skillfully crafted experience.
The Aluminum Cat is part video game and part immersive theatre. Both player and audience member, you go on an adventure with several other players — all from the comfort of your browser at home! Your experience is curated by a live actor who plays the many characters you meet.
Innovation in Interaction Design Award
Cyberpet Graveyard
by alienmelon
Honoring the craftsmanship and innovation behind unique interaction, hardware, and system design.
At some undocumented point in the early 00's there was a critical malfunction at the cyberpet factory. This meltdown led to the miss-creation of several unlikeable and unwanted cyberpets.
Social Impact Award
SHASN
A Memesys x Gadfly Production
Honoring works which explore social, cultural, and/or political issues in a whole new way.
SHASN is a competitive political strategy game about the cost and consequences of power. Every player assumes the role of a politician in the middle of a high-octane election campaign. With democracy itself at stake, players compete to bring alive their own vision of the world
Environmental Design Award
ElemenTerra
by Freeform Labs
Honoring works which create living, breathing worlds through design of spaces, characters, conflicts, soundscapes and more.
You are an Elemental, a caretaker of nature. When a strange cosmic storm decimates your isle, you must master new creation powers to revive its inhabitants and restore it to paradise!
Jury Prix Award
In Other Waters
by Jump Over the Age
Honoring the game that impresses and surprises with depth, innovation, and artistry.
Casting you as an Operator AI, In Other Waters is structured around an ever-growing, tactile interface. Through this unique mode of interaction you will chart underwater courses, scan environments for vital clues, and navigate this unearthly ocean.
Grand Prix Award
Kind Words
by Popcannibal
Recognizes the game among the nominees bringing together the best qualities of this year’s IndieCade Europe.
Players anonymously share their lives' worries, concerns and stresses. Then they respond to other players' statements with letters of comfort, sympathy or gentle advice.
EUROPE 2019 HONOREES
The Trailblazer Award: Blast Theory
The IndieCade Trailblazer Award is an honorary prize given to a working creator who has made both great contributions to the field of games and captures the independent and pioneering sprit.
Blast Theory is a pioneering artist group creating interactive art to explore social and political questions, placing audience members at the centre of work. Since 1991, we have been using interactive media to create groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art that mixes audiences across the internet, live performance and digital broadcasting. Led by artists Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, Blast Theory creates interactive art that puts you at the centre of the work.
EUROPE 2019 CHOICE AWARD WINNERS
Audience Choice Award
Biped
by NEXT Studios
The Choice Award is voted on by the audience attending IndieCade Europe.
Biped is a coop action adventure game with a strong focus on moment-to-moment collaboration between 2 players. 2 little biped robots will walk side by side and embark on a brave journey into ancient ruins, tropical forests and cliffed valleys, looking to accomplish their mission on planet earth.
IndieCade Award Descriptions
All nominated work is eligible for the following juried awards, irrespective of format, or genre.
Tabletop Design - US & EUR
Staring across a board, a hand of cards, or even a chaotic pile of detailed paper notes, games played at the table, often with friends, leveraging the imagination of players to create unique and companionable experiences is the heart of games for many of us. The Tabletop Design Award celebrates the indie tabletop games of the year that innovate, surprise, and delight the heart.
Location Based & Live Play - US
The oncoming frontier of play and experience design includes the amazing worlds of immersive theater, themed experience, virtual and augmented reality spaces, escape rooms and more exploration of bespoke, physical experiences often designed for groups of people and social engagement. The Location Based Design award rewards experiences innovating in these spaces and creating magical new spaces for play.
Adaptation - US
The inspiration for games comes from wildly different sources and places, and games that interpret the world or another piece of media, reflect a documentary of real world systems, or adapt the experience of other places and stories explore the innovative edge of why we play. The Adaptation Award celebrates a game that examines and interprets using the logic of play and the power of interaction.
Cooperative Design - US
Playing with others, driving with friends and allies toward a shared experience is at the heart of many of the experiences we have engaged with over the course of human history. Experiences designed to create inventive and unique interactions that bring us together, working towards a shared goal. The Cooperative Design award rewards experiences innovating in how we play together.
Narrative Design - US
As games grow across boundaries, platforms, and formats, an ever growing array of narratives are communicated in an ever growing number of ways. The delicate art of creating a living, breathing story through design of spaces, characters, conflicts, and more has become a defining art for games and play. The Narrative Award celebrates accomplishment and innovation in this amazing and emergent art of interaction driven narrative.
Procedural Design - US
The Procedural Design Award honors a game that leverages randomness and algorithmic content or behavior to create unique and innovative interactions. Procedural Design is a growing skill with new discoveries made in many fields related to game development - graphics, narrative, level design, meaningful randomness, artificial behavior, and more. This award celebrates the amazing design of procedural and random chance that drives amazing discovery in the field of play.
Performance - US
The Performance Award honors a game with a unique or particularly sublime performance: voice, motion capture, video, live and more. As games grow in cultural weight and professional development, the field of independent development has involved a larger variety of artists from all disciplines. The brilliant pacing, empathy, and understanding of the best performers have been harnessed this decade to make some of the most arresting play experiences we have ever seen. This award celebrates the actors doing the amazing work in the field of play.
Innovation in Experience Design - US & EUR
Innovation in Experience Design honors a game that provides a unique, curated experience. This can come in the form of a rich narrative or be entirely 'story-less'. It takes the player on an emotional arc that can't be had anywhere else.
Innovation in Interaction Design - US & EUR
Innovation in Interaction Design honors the specialized artistry and innovation required to engage with games on a new level. This may be in the form of original controllers, unique interface design, or bold new game mechanics. At its utmost, the Interaction Award acknowledges a work that asks us to reconsider the ways in which we play.
Social Impact - EUR
The Social Impact Award honors a game which explores social, cultural, and/or political issues in a whole new way. It may take us out of our comfort zones, and confront us directly on social progress yet to be done, or mark a real change in the industry. Social Impact isn't simply about diversity or doing good in the world. It can be creating new access points for unlikely players engaging with unlikely topics, new points of connection for people across the globe, or new shared experiences that resonate in our modern culture.
Environmental Design - EUR
As games grow across boundaries, platforms, and formats, narrative and sense of place are communicated in an ever growing number of ways. The delicate art of creating a living, breathing world through design of spaces, characters, conflicts, soundscapes and more has become a defining art for games and play. The Worldbuilding Award celebrates accomplishment and innovation in this amazing and emergent art.
IndieCade Jury Prix - US & EUR
The IndieCade Jury Prix Award is for a game the jury wishes to confer honor for separating itself from the pack through its craftsmanship, innovation, and /or design.
IndieCade Grand Jury - US & EUR
ThThe IndieCade Grand Jury Award represents the best of IndieCade’s best. This is the one game out of tonight’s 36 nominees, and the hundreds and hundreds of submissions to this year’s festival, that not only captures how far independent games have come, but how much farther they can still take us. Past winners include Her Story, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, and last year’s Oikospiel Book I.
Choice Awards
IndieCade will also return with our Audience, Developer and Media Choice awards.
IndieCade Developers Choice - US
The IndieCade Developers Choice Award is voted on by nominated IndieCade Festival developers.
IndieCade Choice - US
The IndieCade Choice Award is voted on by media and audience attending IndieCade Festival.
IndieCade Europe Choice - EUR
The IndieCade Europe Choice Award is voted on by developers, media, and audience.
Honorary Awards
Trailblazer Award - EUR
The IndieCade Trailblazer Award is an honorary prize given to a working creator who has made both great contributions to the field of games and captures the independent and pioneering sprit. The Trailblazer award is for distinguished accomplishment over a career of creation, and recognizes those personalities without whom many of us would have never fallen in love with the field.
Game Changer Award - US
IndieCade’s Game Changer Award celebrates an individual who has impacted the gaming landscape in a significant way, a positive disruptor who has has brought a paradigm shift to our community. Whether it’s advocating for independent developers or creating space for conversations to take place, a Game Change is someone who makes us proud to be part of the industry.
Bernie DeKoven Big Fun Award - US
This annual honorary award was created in collaboration with Bernie DeKoven, to honor his legacy and to recognize creators significantly furthering the field and impact of new, big, and physical games. We love big, pervasive games, because of they way they bring people together and forge connections on a large scale.
