As you may have heard, the IGF announced the main competition finalists for the 2011 Independent Games Festival on Monday. There were five finalists announced for each category: Excellence In Visual Art, Technical Excellence, Excellence In Design, Excellence in Audio, Best Mobile Game, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, as well as eight nominees for the Nuovo Award, intended to honor the most innovative and unconventional games.

Becoming an IGF finalist is a big deal – not only do nominees have a shot at roughly $50,000 total in prizes at the Independent Games Festival Awards at GDC this March, all nominated games get the honor of being playable on the show floor of GDC this year. It’s massively prestigious, and when past nominees-turned-hits include games like Braid and Limbo, it’s easy to see why.

This week, we’ve gotten in touch with some of the IGF finalists to ask them what the nomination means to them. Here are some of their answers:

Alex Neuse, Gaijin Games

Game: BIT.TRIP RUNNER / BIT.TRIP BEAT

Nominated for: Excellence In Visual Art / Excellence in Audio

“Gaijin is very excited to have reached the finalist list for the IGF. It’s almost hard to believe; when you work on something so closely, you start to become unaware of its quality, and to be validated like this by the community in which one rolls is such a joy. All of the other finalists are such talented groups of people that we are honored to be considered their peers. I wish every one of us the best of luck!”


Niv Fisher and Sagi Koren, SpikySnail Games

Game: Confetti Carnival

Nominated for: Technical Excellence


“For us – being just 2 guys working on a game out of Israel, this is just phenomenal! We’re thrilled at the opportunity to have so many people come by and play Confetti Carnival with us.

It’s still really early to say what kind of effect it will have (but we’re very optimistic) – for us, it’s always been about putting the best we can out there and we’ll keep doing just that. See you at GDC!”


Niki Smit, Monobanda

Game: Bohm

Nominated for: Nuovo Award

“It’s not everyday that you get recognition for such a strange and personal piece of work. We made Bohm as a sort of experimental homage to themes and feelings we love. It’s was more about expressing ourselves than about making ‘the best new game™’

We get energized by strange new experiments. So to get recognition from other like-minded artists is equally humbling and honouring. Together with Cannibal and Claynote we got the chance to realize an idea that’s very close to our hearts.

So this nomination doesn’t necessarily mean we succeeded, but it does mean that other people ‘get’ the idea. And that’s just insanely good news, because it means we are not crazy.”

Congratulations to all the finalists! We’ll continue to post developer reactions to the blog throughout the week, so keep checking back for more!