Eight Winners Announced For Independent Games Festival Student Showcase

After announcing the nominations for the Independent Games Festival awards, the IGF has published the list of the winners for its student prize, highlighting the best of student talent in making games.

Eight titles have made it into the Student Showcase, all of which will be playable at GDC where one team will receive $2,500 (along with the $500 all eight get for being selected) and be crowned with “Best Student Game” award.

You can play each of the eight games on their respective websites, and after taking a quick look there’s some very cool stuff in there.

IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer said that “our Student Showcase continues to be the best place to be genuinely surprised and delighted by entirely unknown talent,” and that “this year’s lineup continues that tradition, with eight distinctive and wholly unique games from teams and individuals that we’ll surely be hearing much more about in the future.”

The eight winners are:

e7 (Gymnasium Koniz Lerbermatt)
Fract (University of Montreal)
GLiD (Bournemouth University)
Octodad (DePaul University)
PaperPlane (ENJMIN)
Solace (DigiPen Institute of Technology)
Tiny and Big (School of Arts and Design Kassel)
Toys (Future Games Academy)

There were also several honourable mentions that could be worth taking a look at:

Honorable mentions: About Love Hate and the other ones (School of Arts and Design Kassel); EXP (NHTV); Paul and Percy (IT University Copenhagen); Senseless (University of Advancing Technology); StarTwine (Carleton University); Ute (School of Arts and Design Kassel).

So well done to all the winners. As Boyer says above, it’s worth giving these games a play – they’re free after all – if for no other reason than you can say you played some famous game developer’s game before they worked for Valve.