Umurangi Generation Wins Grand Prize At The IGF Awards

Last night was the IGF and GDC Awards, a twin billing of awards shows that aims to celebrate indies (at the Independent Games Festival Awards) and blockbusters (at the Game Developers’ Choice Awards).

The IGF portion was hosted by Victoria Tran, community director at Among Us studio Innersloth, and the GDCA portion was hosted by Sam Maggs, previously head writer for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and co-founder of new studio Soft Lock.

In the IGF categories, Umurangi Generation — a photography game in the vein of Pokémon Snap, but about a dystopian Aotearoa police state and impending doom — won big, scooping both the Excellence in Narrative prize and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Genesis Noir also took home two awards: Excellence in Visual Art and Excellence in Audio, while black-and-white puzzle adventure game Arrog won the Audience Award. All of the games mentioned so far are on Switch! Hooray!

As for the non-Switch winners, we have voxel demolition simulation game Teardown winning Excellence in Design, surreal browser/social media fantasy sports game Blaseball winning the Nuovo Award (which is given to games that make the judges “think differently about games”; it used to be called the Innovation Award) and spooky space adventure game Vessels winning Best Student Game.

Congratulations to all the winners, finalists, and honourable mentions!