Durham Indie Game Award Winners
Do you think the our judges got it right? Here is your chance. Let us know your choice!
Below are all the games that entered. Play them and fill out the review form on the right. All the devs put in a lot of time and effort into these games. Make sure to really take time with their games. Also, make sure to support them as their games continue to evolve.
Mech Tech - Mech Tech is a fast-paced hybrid of card battler and action game for up to 8 players! Fight as a mech, then hop into your base to deploy your troops to the battlefield! Fend off the Blue Invasion in Co-op Mode, or fight other players in Battle Mode!
Villainville - Join the outcasts of Villainville in this cozy farming sim adventure where Stardew Valley meets Shrek. Grow magic crops, tame the tiny unicorns, sneak into the night market, and befriend misfit fairy tale characters. Bonus? Find the misery mushroom plague saboteur and redeem the irredeemable.
Villainville is story-rich, as fitting its fairy tale inspiration. It embraces a goblincore aesthetic with chibi characters in a 3D world, where discovery and wonder are grounded in moody graveyards and mosslugs fiercely protecting their piles of bones. The NPC’s character portraits and dialogue expressions are hand drawn in a whimsical anime-inspired style by the team’s artist.
The Featherlode - The Featherlode follows a canary equipped with a large drill navigating twisty tunnels to collect gems. Through momentum, boosting, and ricocheting off of harder rocks, try and get a high rank.
Glorgo's Microplastics Mine - Glorgo's Microplastics Mine is an absurd incremental management game that tasks you with gathering the most valuable resource: microplastics. You'll hire workers, reinvesting each clump of plastic they gather into upgrades, equipment, and more workers. All the while, you'll fend off the devious plastic-eating beasts and deal with your overbearing boss, Glorgo. Do you have what it takes to reach 100% Blood Microplastic Concentration?
Nano Raiders - Team up with friends, battle through dangerous missions, collect randomized weapons and powerful upgrades, customize your loadout, and expand your home space station. Push deeper into hostile worlds and discover increasingly rare gear along the way.
Idorsa: The Electric Renaissance - Idosra: The Electric Renaissance is a 2D action-adventure roleplaying game set in the distant future of North Carolina. Five thousand years from now, a future civilization is on the verge of rediscovering electricity. Players take the role of Marika, who finds herself in the crossfire between two opposing bodies. On one side is a government that is taking advantage of the recently rediscovered force of nature-electricity. On the other side is a faction that wants to seize control of this knowledge for itself. Idosra features an immersive story and a rich skills and leveling system. Explore and find books which can unlock dozens of skills, find gold to unlock powerful weapons and tools, and devise cunning strategies to help Marika outsmart the Vallan Empire.
D6scend - D6SCEND is a 3D puzzle game where every move matters. Roll a six-sided die through handcrafted sci-fi mazes, manipulating its orientation to reach the goal with the correct face pointing upward. Master spatial reasoning, uncover elegant solutions, and descend into increasingly complex challenges.
Project Berserk - The fight for the future starts now. Fight with or against your friends with crazy sci-fi tech, innovative mechanics, and a classic yet colorful retro feel!
KOOK - A Quake-like retro FPS with Lovecraftian monsters, steampunk weapons, and mind bending distorted gravity.
FORKLIFT FLOWERPOT - An exploration game about knowledge and discovery. Change the seasons, investigate plants, and discover secrets about the world to stop an ecological disaster.
The Utsuro Hotel - The Utsuro Hotel is a first-person horror roguelite where the building decides where you go. You wake up in a stairwell with twelve doors and one goal: reach the roof. No door tells you which floor it opens onto, and you only find out once you're standing in it and the lock has turned behind you. Find that floor's key to get back to the stairwell, or gamble on the elevator, which is faster, breaks down every time, and doesn't let you choose where it stops. You can't fight anything in this hotel. You can only be somewhere else.
Waves of Jeju: Diving School - Waves of Jeju: Diving School is a cozy simulation game where you leave your corporate job and train with your instructor Eunji to become a Haenyeo freediver on Jeju Island. Bond with school pet Olle and explore the breathtaking scenery where you’ll discover Korean folklore, traditional ecological knowledge, and the wonders of the ocean!
DRIFT BOOM BOOM - DRIFT BOOM BOOM is an isometric Top-Down Combat Racing Game. It supports up to 4 players (local multiplayer) and has 2 main modes.
In Story Mode, players complete a variety of objectives. Different levels introduce players to different vehicles and game mechanics. Between each level, characters speak to each other, explaining the situation and driving the story forward.
In Series Mode, players choose a car and upgrades, and then race. Players are rewarded for doing well in races, and for blowing up their opponents with weapons. As races advance, AI Opponents and racetracks become more and more challenging. If the players lose too many races, they will be eliminated.
The game is silly, featuring constant crashes and explosions, but nobody gets hurt.
Apocalypse Approaches - Apocalypse Approaches is a time-traveling action roguelite where the world ends in one minute and your health is the constantly draining Doomsday Clock. Take damage and lose time. Defeat foes to gain it back. Run out of time? The Apocalypse has arrived. The only option left is to loop back to the start. Use entropy from previous attempts to grow stronger, gain mastery over the Doomsday Clock, and take one step closer to stopping the Apocalypse!
20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes - This is a game of 20 mazes. They're small, and every maze has a unique "gimmick".