Bluebeard’s Bride by Magpie Games

The IndieCade Grand Jury Award represents the best of IndieCade’s best.

Bluebeard’s Bride is an investigatory horror tabletop roleplaying game based on the Bluebeard fairy tale. 

Kleptocrat by The Mintz Group / BumbleBear Games

The IndieCade Jury Prix is for a game the jury wishes to confer honor for separating itself from the pack through its craftsmanship, innovation, and /or design.

Kleptocrat is a unique game of strategy and tactics, based on real-life patterns of money laundering and offshore structuring that have been used by actual corrupt public officials.

The Game: The Game by Angela Washko

The Impact Award honors games that tackle or offer a method for discussing social issues in a whole new way, games that reach new areas or communities, or games that make a marked impact on the industry.

The Game: The Game is a video game presenting the practices of several prominent seduction coaches (aka pick-up artists) through the format of a dating simulator.

TendAR by Tender Claws

Innovation in Interaction Design honors the specialized craftsmanship and innovation necessary to get us to engage with games on a new level.

TendAR is a humorous, fun and provocative installation expanding the mythology of the TendAR app. The installation combines environmental storytelling, AR and emotion/face recognition technology.

Asta Grande by Pietro Righi Riva

Innovation in Experience Design honors the craft or design of the game that provides a unique, curated experience.

Asta Grande is a drop-in, drop-out crowd game for 30 people. It’s a pretend auction of legendary items mediated by a digital interface that is used by the auctioneer to present the lots and keep track of players’ objectives and funds.

Nishan Shaman by NEXT Studio

Innovation in Aesthetics Design honors a game which offers a unique, immense or sublime experience, be it visual, or by taste, touch, sound or some synesthetic combination.

Nishan Shaman is a rhythm game. The storyline follows an ancient tale passed down by ethnic minority groups in Northern China. Our protagonist, the Nishan Shaman, is a female shaman who delves into the underworld to rescue the soul of a young boy. 

One Hand Clapping by Bad Dream Games

The IndieCade Choice Award is voted on by media and audience attending IndieCade Festival.

One Hand Clapping is a puzzle platformer that requires players to sing into their microphone to solve musical puzzles.

BlindFold by Tom Ackerman

The IndieCade Developers Choice Award is voted on by nominated IndieCade Festival developers.

BlindFold is an area control party game where players take turns writing words on a sheet of paper and manipulating the sheet (through folding, unfolding, flipping, and tearing it) to ensure that only their own words are face up and fully visible during scoring. The catch however, is that players must take their turns while blindfolded!

I WAS HERE by Kate Smith

The iThrive Find the Kind Prize is awarded to the game that contains examples of kindness which go beyond mere dialogue choices and resource management, but which approach the idea of kindness thoughtfully and sincerely.

I WAS HERE is a first-person narrative walking simulator game where players get a voyeuristic and intimate look into the lives of others.

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.

Douglas Wilson is a Lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, where he teaches and researches game design. Douglas is also a co-owner of Die Gute Fabrik, a small games studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is best known for his award-winning motion control game, Johann Sebastian Joust, winner of the Innovation Award at the 2012 Game Developers Choice Awards. His work has been exhibited at festivals and museums around the world, including: MoMA, the Museum of the Moving Image, Hong Kong Arts Centre, SFMOMA, IGF, IndieCade, PAX, and Roskilde Festival.

WHAT THE GOLF? by Triband

The IndieCade Europe Grand Prize represents the best of IndieCade’s best.

A silly physics-based golf parody where every golf course is a new surprising type of golf, some brilliant or hilarious, others so absurd they will make you go: WHAT THE GOLF?

Laser Mazer by Mighty Coconut / Lucas Martell

The IndieCade Europe Jury Prix is for a game the jury wishes to confer honor for separating itself from the pack through its craftsmanship, innovation, and /or design.

Walk, dodge, crouch, hide, dance, and squeeze your way past deadly lasers in this challenging puzzle game.

Baba Is You by Arvi Teikari

The IndieCade Europe Choice Award is voted on by media and audience attending IndieCade Europe.

Baba Is You is a puzzle game where the rules you have to follow are presented as blocks you can interact with.

Carly and the Reaperman: Escape from the Underworld by Odd Raven Studios

The IndieCade Europe Choice Award is voted on by media and audience attending IndieCade Europe.

Master platforming to avoid dangers, solve puzzles and build your way through the Underworld in this cooperative multiplayer game.

The Trailblazer Award is an honorary prize given by IndieCade every year to a working creator who has both made great contributions to the field of games and captures the independent and pioneering sprit. The 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.

Michaël Samyn (1968, Belgium) & Auriea Harvey (1971, USA) met online in 1999 and collaborated for several years as Entropy8Zuper! creating sensuous, personal and political web-based art works like “Skinonskinonskin” (1999), “The Godlove Museum” (1999-2006) and “Wirefire” (1999-2003), and designing web sites for various clients.

In 2002 they founded independent development studio Tale of Tales with the purpose of exploring the artistic potential of videogames. Between 2002 and 2015, Harvey and Samyn released 8 videogames: “The Endless Forest” (2005), “The Graveyard” (2008), “The Path” (2009), “Fatale” (2009), “Vanitas” (2010), “Bientôt l’été” (2012), “Luxuria Superbia” (2013) and “Sunset” (2015). All unique explorations of the potential of the medium used by videogames, often winning awards for originality while being attacked for non-conformism. They called for videogames to become a more open medium with The Realtime Art Manifesto (2006) and the creation of the Notgames platform (2010) and co-curation of the alternative videogame expo Notgames Fest in Cologne (2011, 2013, 2015).

The couple have now stopped producing commercial titles to focus on Virtual Reality and artistic uses of computer technology with new projects like “Cathedral-in-the-Clouds” (2015-…) and “Cricoterie” (2017-…).

They live and work in Ghent, Belgium, with Ling, a grey cat.

http://Tale-of-Tales.com
http://Song-of-Songs.org