The Independent Games Festival China has announced the Main Competition and Student finalists for its third annual awards ceremony celebrating the most innovative indie and student games from throughout the Pan-Pacific area.
This year, the finalists offer an extremely broad range of game types and genres, from action brawlers like Pixel May Cry to mobile arcade titles like Super Sheep Tap, with developers hailing from throughout China and its surrounding regions.
Drawing from a prize pool totaling 45,000 RMB (roughly $7,000), IGF China's Main Competition will give away five distinguished awards, covering Excellence in Audio, Technology, and Visual Arts, as well as the Best Mobile Game and Best Game awards. In addition to the prestige and prizes, winners will also receive two All-Access Passes for the upcoming GDC 2012 in San Francisco.
Alongside IGF China's Main Competition, the ceremony will also host the Student Competition, which honors six of the top regional student games, with teams hailing from DigiPen Singapore, the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, and more.
This part of the competition includes two awards -- for Best Student Game and Excellent Student Winners -- and offers roughly 13,000 RMB (roughly $2,000) in cash prizes.
Winners in both competitions will be chosen by a panel of expert jurors including Kevin Li (CEO, TipCat Interactive), Monte Singman (CEO, Radiance Digital Entertainment), Xubo Yang (director of digital art lab and assistant professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University's School of Software), Haipeng Yu (producer, Tencent Shanghai), and jury chairman Simon Carless, IGF Chairman Emeritus and EVP of the GDC shows and Gamasutra.
This year's IGF China will take place on November 12, 2011 alongside GDC China, which will be held at the Shanghai Convention Center in Shanghai, China.
Here are the finalists for this year's IGF China:
Main Competition
Billy Makin Kid!, by SLAB Games, Indonesia [Website, Video]
Clay's Reverie, by SuperGlueStudio, China [Video]
FTL (Faster than Light), by Matthew Davis & Justin Ma, China [Website]
One Tap Hero, by Coconut Island Studio, China [Video]
Pixel May Cry, by Feng Li, China [Video]
Pocket Warriors, by WitOne Games, China [Website, Video]
Super Sheep Tap, by aBit Games, China [Website, Video]
The Line HD, by Ant Hive Games, China [Website, Video]
Student Competition
Nanobytes, by Singapore Polytechnic School of Design Splat Studios, Singapore [Video]
Pixi, by DigiPen Institute of Technology, Singapore [Website, Video]
Robotany, by Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, Singapore [Website]
Shadow Fight, by China Central Academy of Fine Arts, China [Video]
Terra: the Legend of the Geochine, by DigiPen Institute of Technology, Singapore [Website, Video]
Void, by DigiPen Institute of Technology, Singapore [Website, Video]
In addition to the awards ceremony, GDC China will also host its own dedicated Independent Games Summit, which offers a host of lectures covering some of the most pertinent issues in independent development, featuring speakers such as thatgamecompany's Jenova Chen, Supergiant Games' Amir Rao, and more.
To attend either the IGF China awards ceremony or the Independent Games Summit, interested parties can register for a GDC China pass on the event's official website -- see site for more details on deadlines and restrictions.
For more information on GDC China as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC China website, or subscribe to updates from the new GDC Online-specific news page via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. GDC China is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb.
