It was the 20th annual Independent Games Festival award show tonight at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Infinite Fall’s rust belt gothic adventure game Night in the Woods won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize as well as the Excellence in Narrative Award. Arvi Teikari’s Baba Is You also won big — it was up in four categories and took home two awards. The winners were selected from 35 finalists.
The event kicked off with a short speech from IGF chairperson Kelly Wallick, who delivered a message in support of diversity. She gave a shoutout to games like Mulaka by Mexican developer Lienzo and Cameroon-based studio Kiro’o Games’ Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan as examples of titles by creators from different cultures.
“The ability to share and create your stories and experience the stories of others is what makes games so powerful,” said Wallick. “The next step is to open the doors to more communities, to create more opportunities for diversity.”
In additional to the usual raft of awards, the U.K. nonprofit SpecialEffect received the ID@Xbox Gaming for Everyone Award for its work to empower disabled people to play games. The Celeste Team’s action-packed platformer Celeste also took home the Audience Award.
Here are all the winners:
- Best Student Game: Baba Is You (Arvi Teikari)
- Excellence in Visual Art: Chuchel (Amanita Design)
- Excellence in Audio: Uurnog Uurnlimited (Nifflas Games)
- Excellence in Design: Baba Is You (Arvi Teikari)
- Excellence in Narrative: Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)
- Nuovo Award: Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Bennett Foddy)
- Alt.Ctrl.GDC Award: Puppet Pandemonium (Terence Tolman, Nicky Breshon, Kathleen Kamali, Dustin Harris, Simon Manning)
- ID@Xbox Gaming for Everyone Award: SpecialEffect
- Audience Award: Celeste (The Celeste Team)
- Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)