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 Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999. Since then, the ceremony for the Independent Games Festival is held just prior to the Choice Awards ceremony.
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.
Antichamber is a first-person puzzle-platform game created by Australian developer Alexander "Demruth" Bruce. Many of the puzzles are based on phenomena that occur within impossible objects created by the game engine, such as passages that lead the player to different locations depending on which way they face, and structures that seem otherwise impossible within normal three-dimensional space. The game includes elements of psychological exploration through brief messages of advice to help the player figure out solutions to the puzzles as well as adages for real life. The game was released on Steam for Microsoft Windows on January 31, 2013. A version originally sold with the Humble Indie Bundle 11 in 2014 added support for Linux and OS X.
Jonatan Söderström, also known as Cactus, is a Swedish video game developer. He is best known as the co-designer and programmer of Hotline Miami (2012) and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), but had prior to those games developed over 40 small freeware games, many of which were positively received. His game Clean Asia! was nominated for both Excellence In Visual Arts and Excellence in Audio at the Independent Games Festival in 2008. In 2010, he won the IGF's Nuovo Award, which honours unconventional game development, for his puzzler Tuning.
Retro/Grade is a video game developed by 24 Caret Games. The game is about ace pilot Rick Rocket, who must repeat his last space battle in reverse in order to protect the space time continuum. The game play is rhythm-based and timed to original music by Skyler McGlothlin. In January 2009, it was nominated for two Independent Games Festival awards: Excellence in Audio and Excellence in Design. In October 2010, it won the Audience Choice Award at IndieCade.
Amanita Design is a Czech independent video game developing company founded in 2003 by Jakub Dvorský and headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. The company has created award-winning games including Machinarium, the Samorost series and Botanicula, as well as educational and advertising minigames and animations, all using Adobe Flash. Clients include BBC, Nike and The Polyphonic Spree. Since Pilgrims (2019) and Creaks (2020), the company has been using Unity to develop its games. Amanita Design currently operates in several smaller teams, each developing a game of their own. One of them is the upcoming cardboard-built adventure Phonopolis.
Daniel Benmergui is an independent game designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina known for the creation of art games such as Today I Die, I Wish I Were the Moon, and Storyteller.
Robin Hunicke is an American video game designer and producer. She is a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Funomena.
Vlambeer is a Dutch independent video game developer based in Utrecht. Founded in 2010, the studio was composed of Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman. The studio is known for the games Super Crate Box (2010), Serious Sam: The Random Encounter (2011), Ridiculous Fishing (2013), Luftrausers (2014), and Nuclear Throne (2015), as well as for their stand against video game cloning.
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".
Cart Life is a simulation video game developed by Richard Hofmeier using Adventure Game Studio for Microsoft Windows released in 2010. The game was added to Steam in March 2013 but later removed when Hofmeier released the full source code for free.
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. It was first awarded as the Independent Games Festival Grand Prize to Fire and Darkness in the 1999 edition of the festival. The next year, it was awarded to Seumas McNally for his game Tread Marks; following McNally's passing from Hodgkin's lymphoma shortly after, the award was renamed in his honor in 2001.
The high-profile and protracted five-year development of the video game Fez led to its status as an "underdog darling of the indie game scene". The 2012 puzzle-platform game built around rotating between four 2D views of a 3D space was developed by indie developer Polytron Corporation and published by Polytron, Trapdoor, and Microsoft Studios. Over the course of the game's development, Fez designer and Polytron founder Phil Fish received celebrity status for his outspoken public persona and prominence in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which followed the game's final stages of development and Polytron's related legal issues. The game was released to critical acclaim as an Xbox Live Arcade timed exclusive, and was later ported to other platforms. It had sold one million copies by the end of 2013.
Renga is a shoot 'em up video game developed and published by British studio wallFour. Designed for movie theaters for up to one hundred players, players are given laser pointers and are tasked with cooperatively building and defending a space ship. It was showcased at 2012's Indiecade, where it won the Developers Choice Award.
Nathalie Lawhead is an independent net artist and video game designer residing in Irvine, California.
Tyler Glaiel, also known by the moniker Glaiel Games, is an American video game designer and programmer known for games such as Aether (2008), Closure (2012), Number (2013), Bombernauts (2017), The End Is Nigh (2017) and Mewgenics (2025).
Enviro-Bear 2000 is a 2009 video game by Canadian independent developer Justin Smith. The game is a mixture of action, racing and survival genres as the player, who is a bear, attempts to drive a car around a forest to collect enough food to hibernate for the winter.
Mu Cartographer is a puzzle game released by Dutch independent developer Titouan Millet for Windows and MacOS in 2016. Described by Millet as an "experimental exploration game that can be enjoyed as an interactive visual toy", the game requires players to navigate a landscape by learning how to use the interface of a machine. Mu Cartographer was met with a generally favorable reception by reviewers, with praise directed toward the game's visual presentation and cryptic design, with some criticism focused on the intuitiveness of the game's mechanics. Following release, the game was nominated for several awards at the 2017 Independent Games Festival.
Tetrageddon Games is an online compilation of video games and digital art by alienmelon, the pseudonym of independent developer and net artist Nathalie Lawhead. First published as a website titled Tetrageddon, hosting web games designed by Lawhead from 2008. Lawhead combined the releases into a compiled form on the website from 2012, receiving several iterations and revisions over time, and released a downloadable desktop release titled ARMAGAD in 2016. Following release, critics praised Tetrageddon Games for its eclectic mixture of aesthetics and gameplay styles. The project received several awards and nominations, including a Webby Award for the website version and a Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival.
