The 25th annual Independent Games Festival is ready to take center stage with one of its most exciting years to date, as over 500 individual games have been accepted for the 2023 competition.
Developers from all over the world sent in their projects to the largest and longest-running showcase for independent game developers—taking place at the 2023 Game Developers Conference, which will be held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from March 20-24, 2023. Submissions arrived from a diverse group of veteran gamemakers, first-time entrants, student developers, and more.
You may view the entire list of entries at the Independent Games Festival website.
Several of the games on the IGF 2023 Entries list include Devolver Digital’s Cult of the Lamb, Finji’s TUNIC, Ron Gilbert’s long-anticipated Return to Monkey Island, and Blackbird Interactive’s open-source game Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
The Independent Games Festival is dedicated to highlighting unique, up-and-coming, and otherwise standout projects. These include Pontoco’s VR game The Last Clockwinder, 5am Games GmbH’s Letters: a written adventure, the romance survival game Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip, and Newfangled Games’ foldable puzzle game Paper Trail.
From this large selection of games, six finalists will be chosen for each of the IGF 2023 Competition award categories—save the Nuovo Award, which has eight finalists. These categories include: Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Design, Excellence in Narrative, Best Student Game, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
At IGF 2022, Daniel Mullins Games’ horror puzzle game Inscryption won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, along with three other awards—sweeping every category it was nominated in. Head here for a full list of last year’s winners.
Finalists will be announced in January 2023 and will receive free passes to the event and the opportunity to showcase their games at GDC 2023. IGF finalists are also welcome to accept their 2023 IGF Awards remotely.
The Independent Games Festival Awards will take place Wednesday, March 22 on the Main Stage at GDC 2023, and will be available to watch live for free via the GDC Twitch channel. For more details on the Independent Games Festival and this year’s entries, please visit the official website.
GDC returns to San Francisco this March 20-24, 2023, and registration is now open! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC23 hashtag on social media.
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