Visual Design Award
Miniatures
by Other Tales Interactive
Inside an old wooden box lies four curious items: a toy lizard, a captured moth, a screwdriver and a seashell. Each one has its own story to tell…
Step into four hand-drawn memories and discover the mysteries lurking beneath the seemingly calm surface. Explore one story at a time, or play them in a single sitting, in this surreal solo-play adventure.
Live Action Award
ChromaCorp
by The ChromaCorp Team
Players are hired at a seemingly dream role at ChromaCorp, but they soon discover that the colors are questionably harvested. Players are expected to go about their mundane desk work—extracting color using their computers in order to meet their daily quotas. After a turning point, players are later tasked throughout the game to sneak away from their cubicles, and work together in order to subvert the company, all the meanwhile avoiding getting caught by the every watchful eye of ChromaCorp.
Audio Design Award
Music Power Up
by microStudio
In Music Power Up, you step into the shoes of a musician in the 1980s, creating soundtracks for early video games. You will meet programmers, editors, and musicians, uncover new musical opportunities and build your career.
You will create soundtracks for 10 different games, all playable, inspired by classics of the era. You will learn to use the included music app, a powerful music studio that evolves alongside the computers, synthesizers, and digital music technologies of the 1980s.
Tabletop Design Award
The Zone
by Raph D’Amico
Inspired by Annihilation, Stalker, Roadside Picnic, and the SCP Foundation, the Zone is a tabletop RPG for 1-6 players about lost souls on a surreal play-to-lose journey to the center of an alien place that manifests their phobias and obsessions until everyone mutates and only one survives.
Incredibly easy-to-learn, available as a beautiful holographic deck best staged in the dark, or as a free interactive digital experience that interactively teaches the game. Playable instantly with zero preparation.
Performance Award
Lil’ Guardsman
by Hilltop Studios
Play as Lil, a 12-year-old tasked with minding her father Hamish’s post as a castle gate guard while he places a bet on goblinball down at the pub. Showing remarkable aptitude for the job, Lil catches the attention of the royal advisors, who attempt to use her as a tool to advance their own agendas. Before long, this wise-beyond-her-years pre-teen becomes involved in court intrigue, conspiracy, and diplomacy, with her choices determining the fate of the entire world!
Narrative Award
No Case Should Remain Unsolved
by Somi
February 5, 2012. A little girl named Seowon is reported missing from a playground. Police launch an investigation and question witnesses and suspects, but Seowon’s case is never solved.
Twelve years after Senior Inspector Jeon Gyeong’s retirement, she is visited by a young police officer: a woman who pleads with her to reexamine Seowon’s case.
But with each uncovered memory, only one thing becomes clear: everyone in Seowon’s vicinity was lying.
Impact Award
Slasher U: An 18+ Horror Movie Dating Sim, Act 1
by Andi Santagata
“SLASHER U: An 18+ Horror Movie Dating Sim, Act 1” is a full-size, open-world LGBTQIA+ dating sim RPG; exploring the connection between queerness and the horror genre, and quantifying communication, trauma, and sex into viable systems-heavy game mechanics. Within the horror-comedy setting of America’s Horniest Horror Movie University, we dive into the history of the modern media relationship between queerness, being perceived as immoral, and the inherent community within. (Front row is the splatter zone.)
Mike Sellers Systemic Design Award
Balatro
by LocalThunk
Balatro is a run-based game centred around playing cards. The primary objective is to score as many Chips as possible to meet an ever-rising required score. As you progress through your run, you encounter a variety of interlocking mechanics and synergies that help you score more Chips, steering your strategy in interesting directions. This game is LocalThunk’s modern indie take on solitaire, dressed with a poker theme!
Developers Choice
Out of Hands
by Game River
Surreal Art Style: Dive into a psychedelic world with collage visuals, micromodels, hand-drawn art, and live-action elements using the developer’s hands.
Card-Based RPG: Build creative decks, attach items with caution, and battle through story chapters or endless Arcade Mode.
Psychological & Body Horror: Embark on a chilling journey where your body is made of hands, encountering eerie creatures and distorted realities.
Immersive Storyline: Explore shattered dreams across five chapters, complete side quests, and recover lost memories through card-based combat.
Night Games Audience Choice
Back Off Me Booty
by Scallywag Studios
Back Off Me Booty is a cooperative seesaw shooter that uses a physical seesaw rigged with Arduino components as a controller. Two players must work together to tilt the seesaw to aim their cannons, and fire at various enemies behind one another. With enough communication, any pair of scallywags can fight off the enemies in each level and successfully defend their loot!
Innovation in Interaction Design Award
Sol Cesto
by Tambouille, Géraud Zucchini, Chariospirale
In Sol Cesto, your objective is to travel through the floors of a random dungeon, descending ever lower and trying to find the sun lost for years. Each screen contains 4 rooms, which you can go to at any time with a single click. You choose the room, but you don’t choose which location you come across: an enemy that hurts you? A chest full of gold? A secret? Everything can happen…
Jury Prix Award
The Crush House
by Nerial
Film and produce 1999’s hottest reality TV show: The Crush House! Select a crush-worthy cast, satisfy voracious audiences and keep the show on air to uncover the sinister secrets behind this darkly comic thirst-person shooter.
Play as Jae as you capture the budding romances and explosive drama of each unique season in the iconic Malibu mansion. And no matter what, remember to satiate the demands of your rabid audience or risk cancellation.
Innovation in Experience Design Award
No Players Online
by Beeswax Games
“NO PLAYERS ONLINE” is an experimental horror game set in a faux-90s desktop environment and an abandoned multiplayer shooter. As you play a seemingly forgotten game, you may uncover a deeper conspiracy hidden within it.
Explore files left behind by the previous owner, download games from an obscure games forum, and merge their souls.
With an eerie atmosphere, unique mechanics, and layers of digital intrigue, this spiritual successor to the 2019 cult hit offers a haunting and suspenseful experience.
Grand Jury Award
Keep Driving
by YCJY games
Keep Driving is a management RPG about slowly making your way through a procedurally generated pixel art open world. Pick up hitchhikers with their own personalities and stories; upgrade, customize and repair your car. Solve challenges on the road using a unique turn-based ‘combat’ system, using your own skills and whatever’s lying around in the glovebox to make it through.
Trailblazer Award
SWERY
Hidetaka Suehiro, also known as SWERY, is a renowned game director celebrated for his distinct narrative style and unconventional game creations. As the founder and CEO of White Owls Inc., he leads the company in pushing boundaries within the gaming industry. Since its inception, White Owls Inc. has been dedicated to crafting unique gaming experiences under SWERY’s guidance. SWERY has fostered a creative environment where innovative ideas thrive, from founding the studio to his current role.
Since 1996, SWERY has actively developed games that challenge norms and resonate deeply with players. His career includes notable titles like “Deadly Premonition” and “The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories,” exploring themes of mystery, psychological depth, and profound human connections. SWERY’s commitment to storytelling and character-driven narratives has garnered global acclaim, solidifying his reputation as a visionary in the gaming community.
In 2018, at INDIECADE EUROPE in Paris, SWERY delivered a keynote titled “Why did I become Indie dev in recent day?”, reflecting on his journey and motivations as an independent game developer.
https://www.whiteowls.co.jp/
Vanguard Award
Supergiant Games
Supergiant Games is an independent game studio based in San Francisco that strives to make games that spark your imagination like the games you played as a kid. The studio has created a number of award-winning games, including Bastion (2011), Transistor (2014), Pyre (2017), and Hades (2020), and is currently developing Hades II in Early Access.
Supergiant was founded in 2009 by Amir Rao and Gavin Simon who were inspired by the memorable, impactful work of independent game creators at the time as well as games from their childhood. Starting in the living room of a house, the studio’s team grew to seven people during the development of Bastion. Fifteen years later, all seven of the original team members are still together as part of a team that has grown to about 25 developers located around the world.
Each of Supergiant’s titles earned a degree of critical and commercial success, leading up to its break-out hit in 2020’s Hades, which garnered more than 70 Game of the Year awards, including the BAFTA award for Best Game and the first-ever Hugo Award for Best Video Game. The studio remains completely independent, and focused on sustainably creating games that have a chance to leave a lasting positive impression on players.
www.supergiantgames.com
Bernie DeKoven Big Fun Award
Wise Guys Events
Wise Guys Events was co-founded in 2009 by Myles Nye and Greg Snyder. Together with a team of game runners in Southern California and beyond, Wise Guys Events has brought goo-gobs of games to cascades of clients including Google, Apple, Nike, Disney, Toyota, and more.
In addition to our corporate team building programs, we’re proud to have been featured as nominees in IndieCade festivals dating back to 2011. At the IndieCade E3 showroom floor booth, we presented big games Dot Racing (AKA Twistianapolis 500), Rose MacBeth, which also won Developer’s Choice in 2015, and E3-gomania.
Other Wise Guys Events games featured at IndieCade festivals through the years include Werewolf Party, Pickpocket Junction, Høot Patøoter, Mr. Smee, Clue House, and others. We brought games to Games for Change, SXSW Interactive, and Come Out and Play (SF & NY), where we won Best Family Game in 2014. LA Weekly named Wise Guys Events “”Best Party Gamers.””
In 2016 and 2017, Wise Guys Events played The Heritage Scare, an evening of competitive murder, at the Heritage Square Museum. This bespoke offering, a haunted house that you play like a game, was a runaway hit in the early LA immersive scene. Fittingly, it is dead now. But is it ever really dead for good?
Co-founder Myles Nye designs challenges for CBS reality hit Survivor, and his work on “”The Game Within the Game”” in 2021 earned him the distinction of receiving the show’s first-ever lead game designer credit.
Today, Myles runs Wise Guys Events as Head Honcho, along with the indispensible Production Director Awesome Ashby Arciero. They continue to deliver top-tier playful experiences to college campus, community gatherings, private parties, and corporate events across the country and internationally.
teambuildingandtraining.com
Game Changer Award
Sarah Elmaleh
Sarah Elmaleh is an actor, director, and consultant best known as Hi-Fi Rush’s Korsica, Fortnite’s Cube Queen and Gears 5’s Lizzie Carmine. She can be heard in massive titles like God of War Ragnarok and The Last of Us Part II, acclaimed indies like Pyre and Gone Home, and surprise hits like Hi-Fi Rush and Helldivers 2. She loves directing and consulting for both indies and AAA, from Goodbye Volcano High to Fortnite.
Since 2011, working at Kill Screen early in their influential magazine runs, she has sought means of learning from and giving back to the games community beyond performance. She has curated panels for Games for Change, co-organized the first free, multilingual, simul-translated online games conference gamedev.world, served as Game Maker Relations for IndieCade, and for 8 years directed, co-wrote and co-hosted the IndieCade Awards. She loves jurying and celebrating indie games (IndieCade, IGF), teaching actors how to work with devs (Queer Vox) and devs how to work with actors (USC, NYU), and speaking about collaboration and community, from actor best practices to industry inclusivity and labor issues. Since 2021 she has relished interviewing brilliant developers alongside a formidable crew of indie devs and academics on the Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games podcast.
For many years she has also acted as a game dev labor ally and resource. Serving on SAG-AFTRA’s national Interactive committee since 2017, she became Chair in 2022, and in July of 2024, after nearly 2 years of bargaining, SAG-AFTRA called a strike on the Interactive Media Agreement over fair and equitable generative AI protections. Though it now takes nearly all her time and energy, this existential fight synthesizes and draws on her love of games, games performance, and the games community.
