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Who won Tencent's Game Without Borders Awards 2019?

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Who won Tencent's Game Without Borders Awards 2019?

Back in January we talked about our plan to “protect, foster and promote outstanding games” by providing “expert consultation, market testing and other needed resources for standout games”.

We’re still on that mission to help great games break into the Chinese market, and we’re building relationships with developers and industry partners around the world.

Alongside our support plan, we also run an awards competition, to highlight new or unreleased games that we think display potential, creativity and excellence in their field.

We saw a lot of great games, from allergy-inspired platformers (Hayfever) to augmented reality marvels (ARBlox).

We saw hundreds of games, from dozens of countries, and it was incredibly hard to narrow it down to just 30 semi-finalists, and then 7 winners at the end.

However, last month, on the third day of the Tencent Game Developers Conference (TGDC), Tencent GWB held an awards ceremony to finally announce the winners for 2019.

The 2019 GWB Game Awards

The GWB Game Awards judging panel consisted of 8 industry veterans with decades of experience in game design, publishing and direction.

The judges were drawn from various teams from within Tencent’s Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG), and were joined by Soeda Takehito, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Shanghai.

The international winners were as follows:

A puzzle game being developed by PlayBae where you manipulate objects to alter the position and shape of their shadows. You then use the paths created by these shadows to traverse the level and solve puzzles.

A boss rush bullet hell shooter developed by OverPowered Team. In Profane, your health bar is also your time limit. Colourful, fast-paced and inventive.

A Battle Royale where contestants fight to the death on a live-streamed gameshow in a dystopian future. The use of a tower as a setting adds verticality and unpredictability to an increasingly competitive genre.

A deceptively complex shooter – it’s unusual for a game of this type to include manual reloads and headshots, but here they are, present and done very well indeed.

A moody and hardcore simulation where you manage a submarine as it makes its way through the oceans of the moon Europa. It can be really creepy, but it’s also really great.

An FPS/RTS hybrid that offers players multiple roles. They can play as a commander and watch their team from above, like an RTS, or play as an officer and fight at the ground level. Tactical and ambitious.

A gorgeous game and a lot of fun. A Battle Royale with magic rather than guns, it’s fast, explosive and truly does make you feel powerful, as PC Gamer recently explained.

Each of these games had something that made it stand out from the crowd and it would take us far too long to dive into each game one-by-one right here. So, over the coming months we plan to take the time to explore each game individually and talk about what made it so special.

The first game we’ve chosen to look at is Profane, and you can see why we thought so highly of it right here.

Many of these games are playable right now or will be on sale soon.

Profane has been picked up by Alternative Software and was released only a few days ago (go buy it!), Barotrauma, Eximius, SYNTHETIK and Total Lockdown are all playable in some form, while Spellbreak is in closed beta.

It’s a diverse group of games from teams that span continents and we strongly encourage anyone with a love of games to check them out.

The Future

So, what’s next for Tencent GWB? Well, for starters there’s a redesigned website on the way, aimed at helping developers and partners better understand what we’re all about, and how to work with us.

There’s also upcoming events and activities, a focus on networking and developing partnerships, ongoing support plan activities and, of course, attention will eventually turn to organizing next year’s Awards competition.

The best way to stay up to date with Tencent GWB news right now is on our Twitter or Facebook page – from here you can learn about all the latest goings-on and learn when the new website goes live.

And, of course, if you’re interested in showing us your game, we’d love to see it – contact us directly on social media or by sending an email to gwbcontact [at] tencent [dot] com.

PocketGamer.biz regularly posts content from a variety of guest writers across the games industry. These encompass a wide range of topics and people from different backgrounds and diversities, sharing their opinion on the hottest trending topics, undiscovered gems and what the future of the business holds.