The nominees for awards at IndieCade Festival 2014 include:
AFFORDABLE SPACE ADVENTURES [Wii U] by KnapNok Games & Nifflas Games: a 2.5D side scrolling stealth puzzle game about controlling a lonely spaceship on a hostile planet. The players will divide attention between the action on the TV screen and the systems on the Wii U GamePad.
ANTIMATTER MATTERS: A QUANTUM PHYSICS BOARD GAME (REALLY!) [Board Game] by Elbowfish: Antimatter Matters balances strategic choices, surprising interactions with other players and the unpredictable nature of the universe. Explore the strange and wonderful world of quantum physics, where a handful of tiny particles interact to form the atoms that make up ourselves and everything we experience in the world around us. For 2-6 players.
BLOOM The Game [Big Game/Installation] by Bloom Games: Bloom is a large scale building game that encourages crowds to design and explore organic formations.
CHOICE CHAMBER [PC, Mac] by Studio Bean: a game that allows an audience of any size to play along with someone through an endless series of dangerous chambers. Players constantly give feedback that changes how the game evolves in real time, from power ups and enemies to obstacles and rule changes.
CLOSE CASTLES [PC, Mac] by Sirvo: a local multiplayer real-time strategy game. The matches are quick, the controls are simple, and the castles are close. Too close.
CLOSE YOUR EYES [PC] by DigiPen Team Indoor Sunglasses: a 2D puzzle platformer game, in which the players could obscure their own vision in order to pass through obstacles and enemies. You play as a female waking up in a mysterious nightmare, faced with horrible enemies, while the only weapon she has is to close her eyes and run away from her fear.
COFFEE: A MISUNDERSTANDING [Performance] by Deirdra "Squinky" Kiai: A queer and socially awkward interactive play about the weirdness of online friendships that arent really friendships, set in the midst of a fan convention called AwesomeCon. Performed by audience volunteers with mobile devices.
CUPPA QUEST [iOS] by Team Aet: a cooperative local multiplayer adventure game for 2-3 players who must combine their perceptive senses (sight, hearing and touch) and quest to brew the Elixir of Life itself - a cup of tea. The game uses two iPads or iPhones -- one screen for viewing the game board, one screen for controlling/interacting with objects and characters as well as headphones for listening for invisible perils or characters.
DREI [PC, Mac, Mobile] by Etter Studio: Drei is a social experiment. Three unknown builders have to work and communicate together in order to build a tower.
ELBOW ROOM [PC, Mac (Installation), Tablet] by Deep Dark Hole: Elbow Room is a party game where the number of participants is only limited by how many people can fit around a keyboard. Each player claims a single key, and puts that key to use in an easy to pick up game that everyone can play!
ETHER ONE [PC] by White Paper Games: a first person adventure that deals with dementia. There are two paths in the world you can choose from. At its core is a story exploration path free from puzzles where you can unfold the story at your own pace. There is also a deeper, more adventurous path in which you can complete complex puzzles to restore life changing events of the patient's history in order to help the validation of their life.
FRACT OSC [PC, Mac] by Phosfiend Systems: a musical exploration game where the player explores a vast landscape of an abandoned world that was once built on sound. As you start to make sense of this strange new environment, you work to rebuild its machinery by solving puzzles and bring the world back to life by shaping sound and creating music within the game.
FRAMED [iOS, PC, Mac] by Loveshack: an award-winning, narrative-based puzzle game where you re-arrange panels of a comic book to change the order of events and change the outcome of the story.
GEMINI [TBD] by Team Gemini: Gemini is a poetic adventure of two stars flying to the heavens and lighting up the sky.
GROW: THE ORGANIC BUILDING GAMEby CricKeT Games: a 3D strategy game where players, taking the role of different colored flowers, cooperatively build an abstract tree while competitively battling to claim the most points. By adding Leaves to the tree players gain resources such as Buds and Beetles, using those resources to stake claims on the nutrient rich Leaves while waging war with their Beetles.
HACK N SLASH [PC, Mac, Linux] by Double Fine Productions: A puzzle action game about hacking where players reprogram object properties, hijack global variables, hack creature behavior, and even rewrite the games code. With advanced hacking mastery, players can dive directly into the games assembly in the form of procedurally generated dungeons and modify the live-running code.
HEIFER HEIST [Board Game] by cow&duck studios: a family friendly board game where aliens "borrow" cows while dodging the angry farmer. Players race to be the first to gather ten cows and return to space.
HENKA TWIST CAPER [PC, Mac, Big Game/Physical] by OriGaminc: players must twist and turn their controller until they find the correct orientation, while preventing their opponents from doing the same.
HOW DO YOU DO IT? [Flash (PC, Mac, Linux)] by Freeman, Butler, Coss, Kittaka: puts players in the role of an 11-year-old girl whose mother has just stepped out for an errand. The girl immediately grabs her dolls and furtively attempts to figure out how sex works using these plastic surrogates. The game is a portrait of how Nina, one of the developers, actually explored her sexuality as a child who had never been given "The Talk."
ICE-BOUND [iPad and printed book] by Down to the Wire: combines cutting-edge combinatorial narrative with a nested, recursive story inspired by writers like Nabokov and books like "House of Leaves." The player uses a printed book filled with story fragments and distorted images to shape a novel of polar explorers, and collaborate with a long-dead writer's digital ghost.
iO [OUYA, PC, Mac, Mobile] by Gamious: an abstract puzzle platformer about speed, size and momentum. Toy with the laws of physics, reach the exit as fast as possible and grab that gold medal as your reward.
KEEP TALKING AND NOBODY EXPLODES [PC, Oculus Rift] by Keep Talking Team: Strap on a virtual reality headset and find yourself trapped alone in a room with a ticking time bomb. Your friends in the real world have the manual to defuse it, but they can't see the bomb so you're going to have to talk it out - fast!
LYNE [iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux] by Thomas Bowker: Deceptively simple. Infinitely complex. LYNE is a minimalist puzzle game that will knot your brain as it calms your soul.
Connect the shapes. Fill the board. Lose yourself in the interflowing paths of LYNE.
METRICO [PlayStation Vita] by Digital Dreams: a new living world filled with infographics. You have to navigate through Metrico, while all the bar charts, line diagrams and pie charts directly react to your movement, actions and input.
MINI METRO [PC, Mac, Linux, Mobile] by Dinosaur Polo Club: a strategy simulation game about designing a subway map for a growing city. Draw lines between stations to start your trains running, then redraw them as new stations open. How long can you keep the city moving?
N++ [PlayStation 4] by Metanet Software Inc.: N++ is a platformer which combines old-school challenge with modern flair and a unique sense of style. Players control an acrobatic ninja who must evade a slew of inadvertently homicidal enemy robots and collect gold in a minimalist, sci-fi world.
NEVER ALONE (KISIMA INGITCHUNA) [PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One] by Upper One Games / E-Line Media: an atmospheric puzzle platform game for one or two players built in partnership with the Alaska Native community. It delves deeply into the traditional lore of the Iñupiat people of the Arctic to present a game experience like no other.
NOVA-111 [PC, Mac] by Funktronic Labs: a sci-fi themed turn-based adventure game with a twist of real-time action! Fighting aliens in space for SCIENCE!
PRIVATE EYE [PC, Oculus Rift] by Slacker Games: puts the player in the role of a 1950s New York detective, faced with the task of piecing back together his memory after an accident has left him with severe amnesia. Confined to his apartment but armed with a pair of binoculars, he must use his unique vantage point to unmask the killer. However, with his memory no longer intact, everybody he once knew is now a suspect.
REDSHIRT [PC, Mac, iPad] by The Tiniest Shark: Redshirt is a comedy sci-fi social networking simulation game about being a brand new nobody aboard space station Megalodon-9. It's up to you to get ahead using the station's proprietary social network, "Spacebook."
RISK OF RAIN [PC, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One] by Hopoo Games, LLC: an action platformer with roguelike elements. With permanent death as a primary feature, players will have to play their best to get as far as possible. Fight on a mysterious planet with randomly spawning enemies and bosses, either alone or with 3 friends in online co-op.
SERVICE [Live Action Role Playing Game (LARP)] by Shoshana Kessock / Phoenix Outlaw Productions: SERVICE is a live action roleplaying game about patriotism, personal freedom, responsibility and sacrifice. The United States is in the throes of World War 3 and you've received your draft notice, so say your goodbyes and report for duty in this short freeform LARP experience.
SLAP .45by Gnarwhal Studios: takes three of lifes most fundamental elements (slapping, westerns and making rash decisions) and turns them into a card game. When a card is drawn, every player acts simultaneously to shoot each other or jump to cover. The winners will need to have quick wits and even quicker hands to be proclaimed the fastest slap in the west.
SOULFILL [iOS] by Little Wins LLC: a mobile-assisted live action role-playing game that challenges players to make eye contact with strangers while riding public transportation. Built exclusively on iOS using accessibility features, the game has no graphics -- only audio and touch gestures.
TUMBALL [Big Game/Sport] by Tender Claws: Tumball is a wacky, high-impact sport where the artful marriage of tumbleweed and leaf blower is revealed through strategic, fast-paced competition. Two players must harness the raw power of air to maneuver their tumbleweeds, monitor their environment and make quick offensive or defensive plays.
USE OF FORCE [Virtual Reality Installation] by Emblematic Group: a virtual reality documentary project that recreates the moments of the real event in which Anastasio Hernandez Rojas was beaten and tasered to death by border patrol. Audiences are immersed in the traumatic events as if they are eye-witnesses along the US-Mexican border, through the use of wireless virtual reality goggles and a high speed, no latency, full body motion tracking system.
