Last night the 19th annual Independent Games Festival took place during the 2017 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Quadrilateral Cowboy was awarded the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. The award comes with a prize pool of $30,000.
Quadrilateral Cowboy is a first-person puzzle game. You play a computer hacker in the 1980s. It received near-universal praise for its blending of puzzles and story-telling. Quadrilateral Cowboy was developed by Blendo Games and also won for Excellence in Design.
The other multi-award indie winner was Hyper Light Drifter, an action-RPG that plays like old-school Zelda. Developer Heart Machine won Excellence in Visual Art and the Audience Award.
Here is a full list of the IGF winners:
Excellence in Narrative ($3,000)
Ladykiller in a Bind (Love Conquers All Games)
Excellence in Audio ($3,000)
GoNNER (Art in Heart)
Excellence in Design ($3,000)
Quadrilateral Cowboy (Blendo Games)
Excellence in Visual Art ($3,000)
Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine)
Nuovo Award ($5,000)
Oiκοςpiel, Book I (David Kanaga)
Best Student Game ($3,000)
Un Pas Fragile (Géraud de Courrèges, Alisée Preud’homme, Gregory Parisi, Gaspard Morel)
Audience Award ($3,000)
Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine)
alt.ctrl.GDC Award
Fear Sphere (New Arcade)
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($30,000)
Quadrilateral Cowboy (Blendo Games)
The Nuovo Award honors artsy and unconventional games. Winner Oiκοςpiel, Book I has a “mythologically-inspired dog opera.” The alt.ctrl.GDC award is a brand new award this year that recognizes games with alternate or “non-traditional” controls. Winner Fear Sphere uses a flashlight projector and a physical bubble enclosure to craft a unique horror experience.
You can watch the IGF trailer above. Watch the recorded IGF and GDC Awards stream here.
All IGF finalists and winners are playable at GDC on the expo hall.
