Indie title Proteus has been named Notch’s Game of the Year at the inaugural Indievisibility Awards held near Waterloo last weekend.
The game, which has yet to see an official release, allows players to explore an artistically stylised environment to an ambient musical backing which changes depending on the players actions.
Markus Persson (aka Notch), designer behind the massively successful game Minecraft, said; “It’s a wonderful game about exploring and understanding.
“Not much is explained, and not much happens, but the style works amazingly well, and it’s full of atmosphere and personality. It’s affected how I do game design from now on.”
Ed Key, the designer behind Proteus, said: “I was amazed! Not quite sure what to think, but really blown away by the love for the game, especially since it’s kind of a weird thing.
“Notch’s prepared nomination speech really topped it all. I was really touched.”
The Indievisibility Awards, held at Waterloo’s Camel and Artichoke pub, was a light-hearted event aimed at bringing indie developers together to celebrate their contribution to the industry. Along with a few free drinks, winners took home a simple golden teabag in recognition of their accomplishment.
Organised by recent BAFTA Children’s Award winner Dan Marshall, and hosted by the energetic presenters of popular radio show One Life Left, the event has been heralded as a success.
“They were a great reaction to all of the annoying, self-congratulatory awards ceremonies which exist in the games industry”, said Paul Taylor of Mode 7, whose own game Frozen Synapse won ‘IndieGames.com Strategy Game of the Year’.
Other developers to receive recognition on the night included Curve Studios, which won IndieGames.com’s Platformer of the Year for their title Explodemon, and Indie Stone, which won the websites Roleplaying Game of the Year for Project Zomboid.
More whimsical awards were given out for the ‘Rudest Sounding Game’, ‘Best Minecraft’ and ‘Nicest Man’, among others.
“We were genuinely delighted to be involved with the Indievisibility Awards”, said Ste Curran, one of the presenters of One Life Left. “ We had the best time and met loads of lovely people.”
This year saw the release of many critically acclaimed games from small independent developers, most notably the imaginative block-based game Minecraft, which having been accessible in an incomplete form for many years saw an official release last month.
“I think it was clearly a very strong year for indie games”, said Dan Marshall. “If you look at the winners, it’s clear what makes the indie scene so popular- there’s just so much different stuff to play out there.”
