Friday, March 4, 2011

GDC- Minecraft and Amnesia Win Big

Yesterday, Frictional Games' Amnesia and Mojang Specifications' Minecraft dominated at the Independent Games Festival Awards.

Amnesia slaps you in the face with a whole new level of brick-shitting scare tactics
In Amnesia, you play a man in a broken down castle, trying to regain his memories. All while being chased by netherworldy creatures. Did I mention you can't fight them at all? That's right. All you can do is run and hide from these hell-beasts trying to kill you. Oh, and darkness makes you go insane after a while.
Basically, you're boned in every possible direction. Can't fight, so have to hide. But if you hide, you lose your mind. Fun stuff.


Amnesia won awards in Excellence in Audio, Technical Excellence, and the $10,000 Direct2Drive Vision award. Frictional Co-founder Thomas Grip, as he accepted an oversized $10,000 check, said "I think that we need to buy another bag or get more luggage. After three years of thinking we're not going to make games anymore and hating everything and living on noodles... it's totally getting done... and getting awards for it, that seems like too much.”

 Minecraft  won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, as well as the night's Audience Choice award, recieving over 5,000 e-mail-verified votes on IGF's website.

Both are fantastic games, but they weren't that night's only winners. Gamasutra has the full list of the 2011 IGF Award winners:

Best Student Game:
Fract by Richard E Flanagan

Excellence in Design:
Desktop Dungeons by QCF Design

Technical Excellence:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Best Mobile Game:
Helsing's Fire by Ratloop

Excellence in Visual Art:
Bit.Trip Runner by Gaijin Games

Excellence in Audio:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Direct2Drive Vision Award:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Audience Award:
Minecraft by Mojang

IGF Nuovo Award
Nidhogg by Messhof

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Minecraft by Mojang
 [via  Gamasutra]

10 comments:

  1. Heck yes, Minecraft is awesome, so are the Bit.Trip games and Desktop Dungeon. The others I don't know much about, I guess I'll have to check them out.

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  2. Minecraft is spectacular, of course... I just got the demo for Amnesia, and I like how scary it is, not sure I'm ready to buy a game that gives me so much nausea though. The first person view lurches around (appropriately, during sanity loss, etc.) like a drunk on a ship in a storm.

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  3. amnesia is awesome, i was already in love with penumbra but amnesia took it to a whole new level

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  4. I really want to give Amnesia a try, I haven't really played anything in that genre before.

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  5. minecraft-good game, nice post

    + follower:)

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  6. damnit, why didnt i think of minecraft!

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  7. Bit.Trip are spectacular games, I had them on the Wii.

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  8. I'm going to have to check this Minecraft thing out. What's the best part of it for you guys?

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