I would have given all the awards to Kentucky Route Zero, but I guess this is fair too

The Game Developers Conference currently going on in San Francisco is home to the Independent Games Festival. A couple of months ago,the finalists were revealed. Last night, the winners were revealed.

Richard Hofmeier’sCart Lifetook home Best Independent Game and its subsequent $30,000 prize, as well as the Best Narrative Award, and the Nuovo Award “for abstract and unconventional games.” Subset Games’ unforgiving space strategy titleFTL: Faster Than Lightalso took home multiple pieces of hardware in the form of the Excellence in Design Award and the crowd sourced Audience Award.

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My personal horse in this race, Cardboard Computer’s brilliantKentucky Route Zero, took home the award for Excellence in Visual Art. A full list of winners can be found after the break. Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and look at both the list of winners and the list of nominees, and try and play some of the games on the list if you haven’t already. I spent quite a bit of time touring the IGF finalists section of GDC today (you can expect some video coverage of the games throughout the week by Spencer Hayes), talking with various nominated developers and playing their games. They’re pretty much all great in one way or another.

Play cool games. Do it.

The IGF awarded the following games as winners of its 15th Annual Awards:

John and Molly sitting on the park bench

Close up shot of Marissa Marcel starring in Ambrosio

Kukrushka sitting in a meadow

Lightkeeper pointing his firearm overlapped against the lighthouse background

Overseer looking over the balcony in opening cutscene of Funeralopolis

Edited image of Super Imposter looking through window in No I’m not a Human demo cutscene with thin man and FEMA inside the house

Indie game collage of Blue Prince, KARMA, and The Midnight Walk

Close up shot of Jackie in the Box

Silhouette of a man getting shot as Mick Carter stands behind cover