There was a varied array of games on display at the annual Independent Games Festival Awards and this is a short review of the winners. The IGFA rewards innovation and originality in the many independent games made each year, with this years IGFA showcasing over two hundred new and innovative games.
 
The top award of $30,000 Seamus McNally award was given to the fantasy based game Blueberry Garden, created by Swedish games designer Erik Svedang with the unique point that all frames from the exploration game were hand drawn in their entirety which gives Blueberry Garden a very distinctive look from other games. A preview of the game can be viewed here. The award for the Excellence in Audio was awarded to developer Digital Eel's Brainpipe, with the audio being described as "ear tickling sound effects and immersive dreamscape music.” This was particularly interesting for me as I have always had a keen interest in the audio behind video games and believe this constant pushing of boundaries is an excellent way forward.
 
There were two awards for Data Realm's Cortex Command with the game taking away the Technical Excellence award and the much vaunted Audience award. The Point and Click category was won by another game featuring hand drawn frames in the Czech developed Machinarium.
A new award to be featured at this years IGFA was the Innovation Nuovo award which was won by the game Between; this award is aimed at “honouring titles that are pushing the boundaries of what games are and thinking about the medium in a whole new way." This is the very ethos of the independent games developers in my opinion, to keep moving the bar up a step, to truly push the levels of innovation and to test new grounds that bigger, richer and more established development companies are often too afraid to try out. With the contribution of these independent developers, the video games industry will never grow stale or predictable.
Finally the Student Showcase award demonstrates that the development of games is now starting at an early age with the winner Tag: The Power of Paint being developed by a team from the DigiPen Institute of Technology based in Seattle.
 
The significance of these awards are important when compared to the winners of the more major awards; tight shoestring budgets and limited resources are seemingly no barrier to the innovation and forward thinking of these independent developers in creating games with unique vision and beauty.