Richard Hofmeier's Cart Life Takes Grand Prize At 15th Annual Independent Games Festival

SAN FRANCISCO, March 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Cart Life, Richard Hofmeier's realistic, sometimes heart-breaking game about food cart workers trying to achieve their dreams, earned the Seumas McNally Award for Best Independent Game and its associated $30,000 cash prize this evening at the 15^th Annual Independent Games Festival, hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

In addition to winning the Grand Prize, Cart Life also won the Best Narrative Award and the Nuovo Award for abstract and unconventional games, an impressive sweep for a sometimes deliberately obtuse title that was relatively underappreciated before the IGF Awards season.

The other IGF multi-award winner for the evening was acclaimed space strategy title FTL: Faster Than Light by Subset Games. FTL was helped to prominence by an IGF China nomination early in its development and was honored with both the Excellence in Design Award and the Audience Award.

Other IGF award recipients for 2013 include Tomorrow Corporation's quirky title about burning objects in an 'entertainment fireplace,' Little Inferno, which won the Technical Excellence Award. Surreal magical realist adventure game Kentucky Route Zero by Cardboard Computer won the Excellence in Visual Art award for its beautifully designed environments and Jeppe Carlsen's beat-based platformer 140 won the Excellence in Audio Award.

Finally, the Best Student Game was awarded to the third-person, high-speed skating game that celebrates Twitter and cell phone culture, Zineth, by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, picked from another strong set of student game finalists.

All finalists and winners for this year's competition are playable at the Game Developers Conference at the IGF Pavilion on the GDC Expo Floor in San Francisco's Moscone Center through Friday, March 29.

The IGF awarded the following games as winners of its 15^th Annual Awards:

The Independent Games Festival – which also included a two-day Independent Games Summit on Monday, March 25^th and Tuesday, March 26^th as part of GDC – was established in 1998 by the UBM Tech Game Network to encourage the rise of independent game development and to recognize the best independent game titles, in the same way that the Sundance Film Festival has honored the independent film community.

Organizers would like to thank this year's kind supporters of the IGF, including Microsoft Studios (Platinum Sponsor), Valve (Platform Sponsor), DigiPen Institute of Technology (Platinum Student Showcase Sponsor), and Le Cnam ENJMIN (Gold Student Showcase Sponsor).

The IGF offers finalists both global exposure and more than $50,000 in cash prizes to each year's winners, in addition to a guaranteed slot on Valve's Steam distribution service for Main Competition finalists and a one year subscription to the Microsoft Development Network for winners.

For more information about the IGF, and its finalists and winners, please visit http://www.igf.com.

About the UBM Tech Game Network 

A core provider of essential information to the professional game industry, the UBM Tech Game Network offers market-defining content, and drives community through its award winning lineup of print, online, event and research products and services. These include the Game Developers Conference®, the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com and network of sites, the Game Advertising Online ad network, the Game Developers Conference® Online, the Game Developers Conference™ Europe, the Game Developers Conference™ China, Game Developer Magazine, the Game Career Seminars and GameCareerGuide.com, the Independent Games Festival and Summit, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. Visit: www.jointhegamenetwork.com

About UBM Tech

UBM Tech, the global leader in technology media and professional information, enables people and organizations to harness the transformative power of technology. Through its three core businesses – media solutions, marketing services and paid content – UBM Tech produces the most respected and consumed brands and media applications in the technology market. More than 14.5 million business and technology professionals (CIOs and IT managers, Web & Digital professionals, Software Developers, Government decision makers, and Telecom providers) actively engage in UBM Tech's communities and information resources monthly. UBM Tech brands includes: global face-to-face events such as Interop, Web 2.0, Black Hat and Enterprise Connect; award-winning online resources such as InformationWeek, Light Reading, and Network Computing; and market-leading magazines InformationWeek, Wall Street & Technology, and Advanced Trading. UBM Tech is a UBM plc company, a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.  Visit: tech.ubm.com 

SOURCE UBM Tech Game Network

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