IGF student showcase winners announced

The organisers behind the Independent Games Festival have announced the winners of their twelfth annual Student Showcase.

More than 346 teams entered games into this year’s IGF student competition, split across PC, console and mobile platforms, and these have now been whittled down to eight finalists.

Each winning team will be given space to demonstrate their game on the show floor at this year’s GDC in San Francisco, as well as a $1,000 prize, two all access passes to GDC and five Expo passes.

They have also been listed as finalists for the IGF’s Best Student Game award, which comes with an additional $2,000 prize.

The eight winners are:

• Museum of Simulation Technology (Albert Shih – Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center)
• Engare (Mahdi Bahrami & Moslem Rasouli – NHTV University of Applied Science)
• Risk of Rain (Hopoo Games – University of Washington)
• Symmetrain(Philipp Beau & Daniel Goffin – University of Amsterdam / University Kassel)
• Westerado (Ostrich Banditos – HKU)
• Rhythm Doctor (Hafiz Azman& Winston Lee – University of Cambridge)
• Foiled (Unblanched Peanuts – NYU)
• Cyber Heist (Hack n’ Hide – University of Utah)

Previous winners of the Student Showcase include DigiPen’s Nabacular Drop, which became Valve’s Portal series, and Tag: The Power of Paint, which was eventually released at The Unfinished Swan. It’s also worth nothing that Journey and Flower creator ThatGameCompany started out as IGF student showcase winners.

GDC 2014 takes place between March 17th and March 21st.