Baba Is You is an award-winning puzzle game where you can change the rules by which you play. In every level, the rules themselves are present as blocks you can interact with; by manipulating them, you can change how the level works and cause surprising, unexpected interactions! With some simple block-pushing you can turn yourself into a rock, turn patches of grass into dangerously hot obstacles, and even change the goal you need to reach to something entirely different.
The game has over 200 levels that experiment with the game's mechanics in a multitude of ways, requiring the player to understand and manipulate the rules of the game and figure out devious ways to make the objects in the game world interact.
The game was originally created for and won the Nordic Game Jam 2017. Baba Is You also won the Excellence in Design and Best Student Game awards in the Independent Games Festival 2018, and was nominated a finalist in 2 other categories, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. The game was made using Multimedia Fusion 2 by Clickteam.
The winners for the 22nd annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards have been revealed, with A Short Hike by Adam Robinson-Yu winning the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game. Held as a virtual live-stream event following the postponement of the Game Developers Conference, the awards recognize the most innovative and best independent games from the past year.
The categories range from excellence in visual art, audio, design, narrative, best student game, The Nuovo Award which honours the title which makes the jurors 'think differently about games as a medium', and the community decided audience award, which also went to the grand prize winner A Short Hike.
Check out all the winners below, which include unique indie titles such as the colorful co-op adventure game Knights And Bikes, the "mutant soap opera" adventure game Mutazione and the archaeological science-fiction narrative driven game Heaven's Vault.
Excellence in Visual Art ($2,000)
Knights And Bikes by Foam Sword
Excellence in Audio ($2,000)
Excellence in Design ($2,000)
Patrick's Parabox by Patrick Traynor
Excellence in Narrative ($2,000)
Heaven's Vault by inkle Studios
Nuovo Award ($2,000)
The Space Between by Christoph Frey
Best Student Game ($2,000)
Audience Award ($2,000)
A Short Hike by Adam Robinson-Yu
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($10,000)
A Short Hike by Adam Robinson-Yu
The winners of the the 20th annual Game Developers Choice Awards have also been announced as part of the same live-stream as the IGF awards, with several indie games taking out awards next to huge Triple-A titles.
The internet phenomenon Untitled Goose Game by House House took out Game of the Year, while developer Hempuli won Best Design and the Innovative Award for their puzzle game Baba Is You, and the mind-bending detective adventure game Disco Elysium was awarded Best Narrative and Best Debut game.
Best Audio
Control by Remedy Entertainment/505 Games
Best Debut
Best Design
Best Mobile Game
Innovation Award
Best Narrative
Best Technology
Control by Remedy Entertainment/505 Games
Best Visual Art
Control by Remedy Entertainment/505 Games
Best VR/AR Game
Vader Immortal by ILMxLAB & Oculus Studios/Disney
Audience Award
Sky: Children of the Light by thatgamecompany
Game of the Year
Untitled Goose Game by Househouse / Panic
Pioneer Award
Roberta Williams
Ambassador Award
Kate Edwards
This year's IGF and GDC awards were livestreamed on the official Twitch channel for the Game Developers Conference at Twitch.tv/GDC and are archived both on Twitch and on the official GDC YouTube channel.
You can watch the full show in the video below and enjoy the unique angle the awards were presented in this year!
Congratulations to all the winners for the IGF and GDC awards and the many incredible games nominated too. Despite GDC not being able to go ahead for the time being, it is wonderful to see the game development community to soldier on and to still host these great long running awards in a new format.
The DBolical team wishes everyone safe health during these difficult times <3