Produced and hosted annually by GDC Festival of Gaming at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the IGF Awards are the longest-running festival, summit and showcase honoring the most innovative and excellent independent games of the past year and the creators behind them.
Titanium Court blends puzzle elements and tactical strategy gameplay with a uniquely humorous narrative style. Praised for its inventive systems, charming writing and surreal presentation, the game merges match-3 mechanics with tactical roguelike elements on a board where matching tiles not only score points, but also reshape the battlefield, generate resources and force players to alter strategies on the fly. In addition to winning the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Titanium Court was also presented with the Excellence in Design award. This is the second time developer AP Thomson has taken the podium for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, as he also worked on last year's winning game Consume Me with developer Jenny Jiao Hsia. He now sits alongside icons like Lucas Pope (who received the Pioneer Award at the 2025 Game Developers Choice Awards) as one of the only developers whose work has won the Grand Prize twice. The winner of the prestigious Nuovo Award, which honors experiences that make the awards jurors think differently about games as a medium, is the first-person horror game HORSES. The title takes players on a 14-day-long adventure that blurs the line between reality and the darkest corners of our imagination.
The full slate of IGF Award winners, as well as the finalists in each category, represent a diverse range of talented independent game developers across the global industry. Other winners of the evening are Poco, a 2D/3D hybrid point-and-click adventure game that was awarded the Best Student Game; Eclipsium, the first-person horror game that received the Excellence in Visual Arts award; Baby Steps is a unique physics-based traversal game that received the Excellence in Audio award; Wednesdays, which depicts a unique story framed as part game and part graphic novel, took home the fan-voted Audience Award, Proyecto Exo, a unique controller created by Todo Normal, which honors the most engaging, intriguing and well-executed game using unconventional, accessible or alternative physical controls; and 13Z: The Zodiac Trials, the roguelike hack-and-slash inspired by Eastern mythology, which is the recipient of this year’s WINGS Award.
As a cornerstone of GDC Festival of Gaming, the IGF spotlights bold, boundary-pushing ideas from across the global indie community, many of which go on to influence the broader game ecosystem. In addition to the awards ceremony, finalists and award-winning titles are showcased Wednesday through Friday inside the IGF Pavilion on the Festival Hall floor, where attendees can experience the games firsthand and connect directly with their creators. The Festival Hall also features alt.ctrl.GDC, a signature IGF program, further underscoring the Festival’s commitment to experimentation and creative risk.
The winners of the 28th annual IGF Awards are:
Best Student Game
Poco (Whalefall, Micah Boursier)
Excellence in Design
Titanium Court (AP Thomson, Fellow Traveller)
Excellence in Visual Art
Eclipsium (Housefire, CRITICAL REFLEX)
Excellence in Audio
Baby Steps (Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy, Devolver Digital)
Audience Award
Wednesdays (Pierre Corbinais, The Pixel Hunt, exaheva, Christophe Galati, ARTE France)
alt.ctrl.GDC Award
ProyectoEXO (Todo Normal)
WINGS Award
13Z: The Zodiac Trials (Mixed Realms Pte Ltd)
Excellence in Narrative
Perfect Tides: Station to Station (Three Bees)
Nuovo Award
HORSES (Andrea Lucco Borlera, Santa Ragione)
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Titanium Court (AP Thomson, Fellow Traveller)
The Independent Games Festival has served as a springboard for breakthrough independent titles. Previous IGF prize winners include CONSUME ME, Venba, Anthology of the Killer, Mediterranea Inferno, Cryptmaster, Phonopolis and many more critical and cultural hits.