Aquaria Released

Aquaria has been released. You may remember that Aquaria was the grand prize winner of the 2007 IGF competition. The game was developed by Bit-Blot over the course of many years. You can read all about its development on the official site, where they recently did a 7 day lead-in to the game's release. The game goes for $30 but Bit-Blot was kind enough to release a demo as well.
You should definitely go play it. I've played the demo for a few minutes but haven't had enough time to really delve into the waters yet, so to speak.

Here is the final trailer for Aquaria:

Let me know what you think.

GDC 2007: Independent Games Festival Awards

The 2007 Independent Games Festival awards were announced last week. A list of the nomimations for the awards can be found at the IGF nomination page. The finalist announcment can be found at the IGF main site. The grand prize winner was Bit-Blot's Aquaria, which we featured recently. Other categories include Best Web Game, which went to Flash game Samarost 2; and best mod, which was taken by CCCP's Hal-Life 2 based Weekday Warrior. For the full list check the IGF website. In the interest of all things game design, and particularly Independent, I will likely be featuring some these games this coming week, so come on back to see what it is that makes them special.

Aquaria

Aquaria is a pc game being currently in development at Bit Blot. The game is nominated for four awards at the International Games Festival, only a week away.

Aquaria has players taking control of an aquatic girl. She can swim, bounce off of walls, and sing. The game has a very nice graphical style and seems to have a good sense of flow too. The designers are emphasizing exploration and story over all else. They want the player to just swim around and enjoy the environment and discovering it. There are two trailers at Bit Blot's website showing off the game, check them out at the link below. This is pretty much all we know about Aquaria so far, but I'm excited nonetheless. I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Go check it out:
Bit Blot
Aquaria
GameDev Interview
IGF Finalists