Cheats-Area.com

   There is a time when mega-corporations just don't fit into the set. One of those moments is the Independent Games Festival, which awards the best independent games created worldwide. The organizers have proudly announced that this year, a true record was established, as no less than 141 entries have been registered into the main competition. Among them are 2D titles like Aquaria, Xbox 360 Live Arcade games like Castle Crashers, puzzle games like Armadillo Run, and the list goes on.

   A glance at the extensive judge list, reveals names such as Big Huge Games, Nihilistic, Sony, Red Storm, Metanet, Vicarious Visions, Reflexive Microsoft, and Crytek, as well as journalists and bloggers from Penny Arcade, Wired, Kotaku, Joystiq, Edge, Slashdot, and Wired News.

   The awards for this year’s festival ( Mod and Student Awards alike) accumulates over $50,000 in total cash prizes. The ceremony will take place during the Game Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco next March, with five major prizes for Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in Audio, Technical Excellence, Best Web Browser Game, and the standout Innovation Award. A note for the mod section: all mods are eligible, and the prizes ($500 each) are awarded for Best Singleplayer FPS Mod, Best Multiplayer FPS Mod, Best RPG Mod, and Best "Other" Mod; also the winners will automaticly participate at the 2007 GDC, competing for an overall $5,000 Best Mod prize. Good news never stop pouring in. In addition there will be a time interval dedicated for those who want to try out all IGF finalists, which will be announced on December 4th of this year.

   There will also be honorable awards: the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Independent Game of the Year, a category which gave well-known previous winners as Introversion's Darwinia, Chronic Logic's Gish, and Reflexive's Wik & The Fable Of Souls, and the Audience Award.