INDEPENDENT GAMES FESTIVAL

Award

Independent Games Festival: About

OVERVIEW

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an awards festival that celebrates independent game developers. It occurs at the end of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and aims to “encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.”

There are eight award categories:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Excellence in Visual Art
Excellence in Audio
Excellence in Design
Excellence in Narrative
Nuovo Award
Best Student Game
Audience Award

All finalists are awarded with $2000, a trophy and the rights to use the game’s IGF winning status in promotional materials. The exception to this is the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, where the winner will receive $10,000, a trophy, the rights to use the game’s IGF winning status in promotional materials and three All Access passes to the next year’s GDC.

REQUIREMENTS

To be eligible for these awards, your game must:

Be an indie game
Must be published OR substantially feature complete and planned to be published within twelve months of the IGF ceremony
Run on any platform
Not be a finalist from previous years

If applying for the Best Student Game award, it must be developed by full or part-time students during semester.

APPLICATION PROCESS

To apply, you must first fill out an application form on IGF’s website. The application involves personal details and short answer questions regarding your game and your team. It also requires a link to a playable build of your game.

Submitting your game has a fee of $75 OR $25 if you are a student.

I'M INTERESTED, WHAT NOW?

Applications for IGF open once a year. The most recent round was open July to September 2019. To be notified when the next round opens, subscribe to the IGF Twitter at https://twitter.com/igfnews

Further information on the program can be found at https://igf.com/

Independent Games Festival: Projects