The Independent Games Festival is celebrating 25 years of indie games at GDC. Submissions are currently open until November 16th, 2022 for creators to enter into all the categories for the sought-after IGF Awards.

The IGF will be nominating six finalists for each of the standout titles in the following categories; excellence in visual art, excellence in audio, excellence in design, excellence in narrative, and the best student-created game.

Eight finalists will be chosen for the Nuovo Award which looks for "the title that makes the judges think differently about games as a medium”. A public poll will determine the winner of the IGF Audience Award which will feature each of the competition's finalists. Finally, six nominees will be selected to compete for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize which will see the winner walk away with a prize of $10,000. Each of the other category winners will receive $2000 and all finalists will receive a $1000 stipend regardless of their success at the event.

Who is judging?

Judges for the competition will include numerous representatives from the mainstream video games industry, including previous notable IGF winners and finalists, other independent game developers and indie-friendly game journalists. A specific set of selected judges will be picking the winners for each award.

IGF is part of the Games Developers Conference 2023 and will be held at San Francisco's Moscone Centre, starting on March 20th and running until March 24th 2023. Submission applications can be found here with the finalists being announced sometime in January next year. The Independent Games Festival is also offering a waiver of $75 for those making interesting or experimental works, who would otherwise pass up the opportunity to enter the contest.

We recently saw the conclusion of our Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki event which saw over 700 leading companies attend the show.