2018 Independent Games Festival award nominees announced

The 2018 Independent Games Festival—the 20th one, as it happens—will be held on March 21 ahead of the 2018 Game Developers Conference. Nearly 600 indie games were evaluated this year, but as the festival's organizers announced today, only 35 made the cut for the annual awards ceremony. Here's a full rundown of the nominees and categories:   

Excellence in visual art

Excellence in audio

Excellence in design

Excellence in narrative

Best student game

  •  IO Interloper 
  •  Don't Make Love  
  •  Penny Blue Finds a Clue 
  •  We Were Here  
  •  Baba Is You  
  •  Guardian of the Gears  

Nuovo award

Seumas McNally grand prize

While most categories are self-explanatory, it's worth noting that the Nuovo award is for "thinking differently about games as a medium," in case the nominees didn't give that away. You can find more details and the honorable mentions in the official IGF listing. 

Austin Wood
Staff writer, GamesRadar

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.