The Independent Game Festival has announced the eight winners of the 16th annual Student Showcase, celebrating the most innovative student games from around the world this year. It's a stiff competition. The judges—other independent developers, mainstream developers, academics, and journalists—played nearly 350 entries.
They chose (in no particular order):
Museum of Simulation Technology by Albert Shih - Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center, which we were impressed with as well .
Engare by Mahdi Bahrami & Moslem Rasouli - NHTV University of Applied Science, a puzzle game which you can find here .
Risk of Rain by Hopoo Games - University of Washington, which you can already buy on Steam .
Symmetrain by Philipp Beau and Daniel Goffin - University of Amsterdam / University Kassel. the only game in the group that's not on PC, but you can get it for iOS .
Westerado by Ostrich Banditos - HKU, which you can play on Adult Swim .
Rhythm Doctor by Hafiz Azman and Winston Lee - University of Cambridge, a rhythm game which you can find a demo of here .
Foiled by Unblanched Peanuts - NYU, a fighting game with shades of Samurai Gunn , which you can find here .
Cyber Heist by Hack n' Hide - University of Utah. This looks really cool. It's a cooperative game in which one player moves through a level in a first-person point of view, and the other helps him by hacking obstacles from what looks like a 2D, puzzle game perspective. Unfortunately, no demo for this one.
Honorable mentions include Ladylike , Rabbit Rush , Flying Fish , and Bokida .
All the Student Showcase winners will be playable at the GDC 2014 show floor starting March 17. Each team will receive a prize of $1,000, all-access passes to the show, and are also in the running for an additional $2,000 prize for Best Student Game, to be revealed at the IGF Awards on March 19.