SAN FRANCISCO – March 23, 2022 – Daniel Mullins Games’ Inscryption won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 24th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards tonight. The ceremony, which honored some of the most innovative and excellent independent games of the past year, took place as part of the 2022 Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
In addition to the Grand Prize, Inscryption took home the awards for Excellence in Design, Excellence in Audio and Excellence in Narrative. Inscryption is a genre-bending love letter to video games that blends deckbuilding, roguelike escape-room style puzzles and psychological horror into a surprising mix.
The full slate of 2022 IGF Award winners features many notable independent titles. Papetura by Petums, a handcrafted puzzle adventure game with a unique world handmade entirely out of paper, and beautiful fragile music won the Excellence in Visual Art award. The Nuovo Award, which honors the title that makes jurors ‘think differently about games as a medium,’ went to developer Lily Zone for Memory Card, a collection of development builds, small creations, pictures, works in progress, and worlds in the process of coming together, captured as-is by their developer and laid out for the player to experience.
The Best Student Game winner, Live Adventure by the Live Adventure Team, is a second-person adventure game that follows the expedition of two young explorers in search of their parents. Mini Motorways by Dinosaur Polo Club won the community-driven Audience Award, which is chosen by fans through a public voting process.
All IGF titles, including both finalists and winners, are playable for any GDC pass holder at the IGF Pavilion located on the GDC Expo Floor in San Francisco’s Moscone Center through Friday, March 25th.
The winners of the 24th annual IGF Awards are:
Best Student Game ($2,000)
Live Adventure (Live Adventure Team)
Excellence in Design ($2,000)
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
Excellence in Visual Art ($2,000)
Papetura (Petums)
Excellence in Audio ($2,000)
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
Nuovo Award ($2,000)
Memory Card (Lily Zone)
Excellence in Narrative ($2,000)
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
Audience Award ($2,000)
Mini Motorways (Dinosaur Polo Club)
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($10,000)
Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games)
The awards were livestreamed on the official Twitch channel for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) at Twitch.tv/GDC and are archived both on Twitch and on the official GDC YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/c/gdconf.
The IGF was established in 1998 to recognize the best independent game developers and encourage creativity and excellence in independent games. For more information on the Independent Games Festival, please visit the official IGF website at www.igf.com. For more details on the Game Developers Conference, please visit the GDC’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
