The Independent Games Festival has been going strong for 17 years now, which is pretty crazy to think about. The first big winner of the IGF all the way back in 1999 was Fire and Darkness, a PC game which hilariously enough was never released. In 2011 and 2012 when the mobile explosion was happening, both Hellsing’s Fire ($0.99) and Beat Sneak Bandit ($2.99) took home awards. Since then, mobile games have been judged right along side “real" games, and this year a few of them have made the finals.
App Store favorites Oquonie ($1.99), 80 Days ($4.99), Framed ($3.99), The Sailor’s Dream ($3.99), Bounden ($2.99) and Desert Golfing ($1.99) all popped up in various categories. The actual awards themselves will take place during GDC, on March 4th. There’s $60,000 worth of prizes on the line too. The above list of games have already won tons of accolades and awards elsewhere, so it isn’t much of a surprise to see them doing well in the eyes of the IGF judges. If you don’t have any of those games, you should fix that.
