IGF 2011 : Finalists and favorites

Posted on January 5, 2011

First, sailors, we wish you a happy new ludic and interactive year!

Few days ago, the 2011 IGF Main Competition’s finalists have been revealed.
Seasons after Fall didn’t make it but it’s not really surprising: with more than 400 entrants this year, the competition was quite tough and, compared to (pretty good and finished) games like Minecraft and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, our IGF demo was certainly not good enough to blow the IGF judges’ minds. Well, now we’ll have to wait until March and the IGF Awards ceremony in order to know the names of the winners in each category…but some of them already won our hearts.

Last November, when we discovered the 400 entrants for the main competition, we made a list of our favorite games. Some are finalists, some others are not. Of course there were quite famous games in this selection (Minecraft, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Cave Story, Overgrowth) but we’ll not talk about them today. So, here are 9 “not so famous” games that we really want you to discover: our 2011 IGF Main Competition’s favorites.

– – – – – – –

– SNAPSHOT

With its simple concept (taking photos of objects) but a lot of possibilities (the gravity and speed of objects are also captured), Snapshot shares some mechanics with Portal but has its own personality. We can’t wait to play it and duplicate the little robot again, and again, and again…

– – – – – – –

– SWIMMING UNDER CLOUDS

We are under the spell of Swimming Under Clouds since we’ve seen its trailer. See how the physic of the liquid sphere (Yacine, the programmer, worked at Havok) and the graphics (by Orioto) are so perfectly mixed. Lovely!

– – – – – – –

– MARVIN’S MITTENS

Snow, trees, platforms…and even a fox (watch the trailer): this game has some similarities with Seasons after Fall. After we watched its trailer, we’ve mailed the developers of Breakfall to say “hi!” and know more about their project. It seems like they work on Marvin’s Mittens every week-end since three years. Now it’s enough: we want to play it!

– – – – – – –

– KAMELEON

Created by Kejero, a composer of movies and videogames’ soundtracks, the goal of Kameleon is to discover what “adaptive music” is in a fun way. You can play the Beta build of the game on Kejero’s website. We already finished it twice cause we really like the sound experience the game delivers. If you like music, you should try it.

– – – – – – –

– HOHOKUM

An open world, a lot of activities (puzzle, combat, race) and a lovely art style (by Richard Hogg), Hohokum reminds us what we like in Katamari Damacy. We also like the fact that it has really simple controls. This toy chest is one of the IGF finalist in the Excellent in Visual Art category.

– – – – – – –

– SPY PARTY

One player is an inflitrated spy in a cocktail party, the other one is the sniper that has to find the spy and kill him before he completes his evil plan. Pretending to be a non-playable character isn’t a brand new idea, but no doubt Spy Party will surprise us. And it seems the IGF judges (that have played the game) think like we do cause Spy Party is part of the Seumas Mc Nally Grand Prize.

– – – – – – –

– SUBSTREAM

Substream has quite unique visual and sound elements including geometry morphing. You can’t imagine how sweet these words are for Guillaume’s ears: geometry morphing. And it seems the game has been made by only one man (with some help for sound, ok).

– – – – – – –

– ROTASTIC!

We’ve discovered Rotastic! at the Festival du Jeu Vidéo in Paris, the same convention we showed Seasons after Fall to the public for the first time. Dev friends told us we should try this one-button-multiplayer game, so we did. And we liked that! Fun, addictive, french.

– – – – – – –

– MIEGAKURE

Miegakure is a 3D game that also uses a 4th dimension, but not the time dimension we know. The player should travel from a dimension to another to understand how the level really is. It reminds us some brainstorm talks we had at the very beginning of Seasons after Fall (and ideas we left behind). A quite mysterious game.