The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, and innovation in video game development by CMP Media, later known as UBM Technology Group, IGF is now owned by Informa after UBM's acquisition.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
Seumas McNally was a Canadian video game programmer and designer. He is best known for indie games, notably DX-Ball and Tread Marks, which won the Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival (IGF). The award was posthumously renamed in his honour when he died at age 21 of Hodgkin's lymphoma, shortly after having received the award himself.
Oasis is a turn-based strategy video game developed by American studio Mind Control Software and published for Microsoft Windows by PlayFirst in April 2005. Konami released a mobile phone port in 2006. Mind Control reacquired rights to the game from PlayFirst in 2010 and released an iPad version called Defense of the Oasis that same year. On August 25, 2020, the iPad version was published on Steam. Oasis is a casual game set in ancient Egypt that combines Civilization-style strategy and puzzle gameplay. Oasis has been described as "Civilization meets Minesweeper".
Digital Eel is a self-funded independent video game development team located in the Seattle, Washington area. Digital Eel is best known for its Infinite Space series of space roguelikes.
Wik and the Fable of Souls, also known in the Xbox 360 version as Wik: The Fable of Souls, is a platform video game developed by Reflexive Entertainment. The main character, Wik uses a combination of jumping and his long, grapple-like tongue to navigate the world. Accompanying Wik on his journey is a mule-like creature named Slotham. On each level the player must capture a set number of grubs and deliver them to Slotham, but getting the grubs to Slotham becomes more and more challenging through each chapter. There are various bugs that try to steal the grubs or directly harm Wik, and on some levels Wik can fall off the platforms into the abyss. Each level includes three gems; a ruby, an emerald, and a diamond, finding all of these throughout the course of the game is required in order to achieve the best ending.
Anino Games is a Philippine third-party game developer for different platforms founded by Niel Nagondon who is often acknowledged as the pioneer of the gaming industry in the Philippines. It is composed of two sister companies – Anino Entertainment, which focuses on PC, console, and virtual reality games, and Anino Mobile, which develops mobile games. The company takes its name from anino, a Tagalog word meaning "shadow".
Klei Entertainment Inc. is a Canadian video game development company located in Vancouver, British Columbia. Klei was formed in July 2005 by Jamie Cheng. Their best-known titles include Don't Starve and Oxygen Not Included.
GameHouse Inc. is an American casual game developer, publisher, digital video game distributor, and portal, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a division of RealNetworks.
Derek Yu is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger. Yu has designed and co-designed several award-winning games, most famously Spelunky, Aquaria, and Eternal Daughter. He is also notable as a blogger and custodian of the influential TIGSource blog/community about independent video games. He has been called an "indie superstar" and a "genuine icon" of the video game industry.
HipSoft is a Redmond, Washington-based developer of casual video games founded in 2002 by three of the original founders of Monolith Productions: Brian Goble, Garrett Price, and Bryan Bouwman. HipSoft has made over a dozen games, many of which have become popular in the casual gaming industry. Its games have been translated into many different languages and are distributed and sold worldwide through websites and retail outlets. All of the games are available for Windows and most for Mac OS X, and are being developed by partner companies for the Nintendo DS, mobile phones and other platforms.
Alawar Entertainment is an international developer and publisher of video games for PC, mobile platforms, games consoles and other devices. Founded in Novosibirsk, Russia, it is based in Lewes, Delaware, United States. Its main areas of activity are mid-core games for experienced players, as well as casual downloadable and F2P games for PC, MacOS, IOS, Android, PlayStation (console), Xbox, social networks, and other platforms.
Boomzap Entertainment is a casual games developer registered in Singapore with a virtual office environment. It was formed in 2005 and has released 50 games to date that are ported on various platforms. Boomzap has developed for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, and Android. Its games are available on games portals such as Big Fish Games, Yahoo!, WildTangent, GameHouse, Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, Steam and others.
Direct2Drive is an online game store offering PC games via direct download.
Bastion is an action role-playing video game developed by independent developer Supergiant Games and originally published in 2011 by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. In the game, the player controls "the Kid" as he moves through floating, fantasy-themed environments and fights enemies of various types. It features a dynamic voiceover from a narrator, and is presented as a two-dimensional game with an isometric camera and a hand-painted, colorful art style. Bastion's story follows the Kid as he collects special shards of rock to power a structure, the Bastion, in the wake of an apocalyptic Calamity.
Gish is a 2004 platform game developed and published by Chronic Logic. After eight months in development, it was released in May 2004 to a positive reception. A sequel, Gish 2, was canceled. The game became open-source software in May 2010 and received a 15th-anniversary update in January 2020.
Simogo is a Swedish independent video game developer based in Malmö. The company was founded in 2010 and is best known for creating games for mobile devices, including Year Walk and Device 6. Its name comes from the name of its founders Simon (SIM), and Gordon (GO); the 'O' from the Swedish word "och" meaning "and".
The Seumas McNally Grand Prize is the main award given at the Independent Games Festival (IGF), an annual event that takes place during the Game Developers Conference, one of the largest gatherings of the indie video game industry. The award is named after computer game programmer Seumas McNally (1979–2000), founder of independent game development company Longbow Digital Arts. McNally died of Hodgkin's lymphoma shortly after receiving the award, then just the IGF Grand Prize, in 2000 for his game Tread Marks. The award is given alongside a prize of US$30,000.
Marvel Puzzle Quest is a video game released by D3 Go! and Marvel Entertainment on October 3, 2013, and developed by Demiurge Studios. The fourth installment in the Puzzle Quest series, it is a free-to-play, match-three Bejeweled-style puzzle battle game set in the Marvel universe, featuring 319 playable, unlockable, recruitable Marvel characters.
Bad Milk is a puzzle video game developed by New York City-based developer Dreaming Media, the working name of brothers Ted and Mick Skolnick. It was originally released in November 2000 for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Created entirely in Macromedia Director 7 and intended to be an art game, the game features a number of puzzles involving full motion video and audio clues. It won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2002 Independent Games Festival, as well as the award for Innovation in Audio.
