Miegakure is finalist at the Independent Games Festival 2011 in the “Technical Excellence” category. Combine this with last year’s nomination in the “Excellence in Design” Category, and I think that’s enough awards for now.
Here’s what the jury had to say:
Jurists also praised Marc ten Bosch’s fourth-dimension exploring puzzler Miegakure for using game mechanics to “provide a space for the exploration of a technically complex and fascinating concept,” and generally serving “as a demonstration of why games are unique among other technical mediums, able to illuminate ideas through interaction in a way that nothing else can.”
While I’m on the subject of awards, I never wrote a blog post about the award the game received at Indiecade this past October in Culver City. It was the “Amazing” award, which was originally the “Technical” award, but was renamed since, I am told, rewarding the game’s technical prowess didn’t seem to be enough.
Photograph by the lovely .tiff. On the left is Steph Thirion (Sublime Experience Award), of Ellis and Faraway fame, another French speaking indie game developer. In the middle is Tim Schafer (Trailblazer Award), of The Secret of Monkey Island fame, and founder of Double Fine.
Progress on the game has been steady. I focused a lot of my attention on refining the start of the game: smoothing out on the difficulty ramp, making sure each important concept is introduced in its own level. I’m quite satisfied with the results, and I’ll need to talk about that in a blog post eventually. The graphics have also improved quite a bit, and I’m looking forward to sharing that with you soon as well. This is actually very much related. Especially in this game, graphics are more than “sizzle on the steak,” as players use (subconsciously and not) all available visual and auditory cues to learn how to navigate the game’s space.
