Google announces the winners of their first annual Indie Games Festival

If you’re a part of the indie games community, then you have probably been paying close attention the the festival that Google held in San Francisco this Saturday. 30 innovative games were put on display for judges and the public alike, and today Google is ready to announce their seven finalists and three winners.

Contestants were judged based on visual and audio aesthetics as well as creative gameplay design. The panel of judges consisted of industry experts.

The runners up include Parallyzed, an “atmospheric adventure platformer with unique gameplay set in a dark and enchanting dreamscape”; Norman’s Night In: The Cave, a 2D puzzler following the tale of a man lost in a cave with nothing but a bowling ball; Armajet, a multiplayer jetpack arena shoot-em-up; and Antihero, an Oliver Twist inspired strategy game set in a gritty cityscape.

Of the runners up, only Parallyzed is currently available. The rest are slated for release in the final quarter of 2016.

Taking home the title of Champ are three games:

Orbit – Playing with Gravity, a puzzler that is, at its heart, essentially a gravity simulator. Flick colorful particle planets into existence to navigate through a gauntlet of black holes. The game also contains a sandbox mode so you can create your own challenges.

Numbo Jumbo is a curious number puzzle game that would probably allure the mathematically minded. It’s a simple game in which you find paths through numbered nodes such that they add up correctly.

Bit Bit Blocks is yet another puzzler, but this one is more action based with cutesy graphics and multiplayer capabilities. Although you can challenge your friends, there’s also a single player campaign to play through.

Winners and nominees were awarded with a slew of prizes including Google I/O 2017 tickets, a Tango Development kit, Google Cloud credits, an NVIDIA Android TV & K1 tablet, and a Razer Forge TV bundle.

Google took the opportunity of this announcement to also reveal that, due to the success of this US Indie Games Festival, a UK variant will be coming to European soil soon. Details on the ground are few for now – we don’t have any dates or destinations yet – but if you’re a European indie dev, you might want to start getting your ducks in a row for this opportunity!

If you’ve been looking for quality mobile games, few have faced as much professional review recently as these. Check out those that are currently available, and let us know what you think of them in the comments below!