Betrayal At Club Low wins IGF Grand Prize

Cosmo D’s surreal night club RPG Betrayal At Club Low was the big winner at tonight’s IGF Awards, picking up both the Seumus McNally Grand Prize and the Nuovo Award. It was one of this year’s frontrunners in terms of nominations, winning all but one of the awards it was up for this year. The other nomination was for Excellence In Design, which went to the also excellent The Case Of The Golden Idol, proving that, yep, once again the RPS Advent Calendar is at the forefront of great indie taste-making. Here’s the full list of winners from tonight’s event.

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

• WINNER: Betrayal at Club Low (Cosmo D Studios)
• TUNIC (TUNIC Team)
• The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games)
• IMMORTALITY (Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid)
• Neon White (Angel Matrix)
• Not For Broadcast (NotGames)

Best Student Game

• WINNER: Slider (randomerz)
• Gevaudan (Nicolas Bernard)
• Mind Diver (Indoor Sunglasses)
• Presenter Slides (Mathias Schifter & Brin Žvan)
• Shutter (ARTFX 2022)
• Skala (Gustav Almström)

Excellence in Audio

• WINNER: The Forest Quartet (Mads & Friends)
• Dome Keeper (Bippinbits)
• Paradise Marsh (LazyEti)
• South of the Circle (State of Play)
• TUNIC (TUNIC Team)
• We are OFK (Team OFK)

Excellence in Design

• WINNER: The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games)
• Against the Storm (Eremite Games)
• Betrayal at Club Low (Cosmo D Studios)
• Mr. Sun’s Hatbox (Kenny Sun)
• Neon White (Angel Matrix)
• Stacklands (Sokpop Collective)

Excellence in Narrative

• WINNER: IMMORTALITY (Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid)
• Butterfly Soup 2 (Brianna Lei)
• Citizen Sleeper (Jump Over the Age)
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (Northway Games)
• NORCO (Geography of Robots)
• South of the Circle (State of Play)

Excellence in Visual Art

• WINNER: RPG Time: The Legend of Wright (DeskWorks Inc.)
• Afterglitch (Vladimir Kudelka)
• How Deep Is the Dark Water? (Rhett Tsai)
• Potionomics (Voracious Games)
• To Hell With the Ugly (La Poule Noire, ARTE France)
• TUNIC (TUNIC Team)

Nuovo Award

• WINNER: Betrayal at Club Low (Cosmo D Studios)
• Afterglitch (Vladimir Kudelka)
• An Outcry (Quinn K.)
• He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me (Taylor McCue)
• Queer Man Peering Into a Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
• Sylvie Lime (Love♥️Game)
• Time Bandit (Joel Jordon)
• Titanic II: Orchestra for Dying At Sea (Flan Falacci)

Finally, in addition to all these awards, Potionomics won the Audience Award this year. This was open to every game that was nominated this evening, which means it beat all 33 other finalists to the punch. Quite an achievement!

I’m also glad to see a couple of winners on here that we haven’t had a chance to write about at RPS just yet, such as Slider, The Forest Quartet and RPG Time: Legend Of Wright. Slider isn’t quite out yet, admittedly, but you can bet it’s going straight onto my Steam wishlist after tonight. The Forest Quartet, meanwhile, squeaked out right at the tail end of December last year, and I actually had my eye on RPG Time for ages and then never quite got round to reviewing it (although it’s definitely still on my to play pile, I swear). In any case, I’ll be scouring the GDC showfloor to give them a go later this week, so watch out for more thoughts on them then.