Darwinia scoops a record four IGF nominations.

UK maverick developers Introversion selected to attend IGF

23rd February 2006. Cambridge, UK. Introversion, the maverick independent British development outfit behind unique titles Uplink and Darwinia today announced its attendance at the forthcoming Independent Games Festival (IGF) which takes place during GDC in March 2006. GDC, held in San Jose, is the single largest game development gathering in the world.

Their critically acclaimed cult-action strategy PC game, Darwinia, has been nominated for a total of 4 separate awards:

• The Seamus McNally Grand Prize of $20,000 – for Best Independent Game
• Innovation in Game Design
• Technical Excellence
• Innovation in Visual Art

Following a record total of 118 entries, competition is especially fierce, but the forty IGF judges chosen from mainstream and indie game creation and journalism circles, have singled out their pick of the outstanding indie titles with Darwinia featuring heavily. This is the first time a British developer has picked up so many nominations at the US dominated IGF.

Mark Morris, Managing Director of Introversion said, "We're absolutely thrilled to have been nominated in not one but four categories. This is an amazing achievement for us. We've worked hard to make Darwinia something special and are delighted to have come to the attention of such an illustrious panel of judges."

Introversion chose to publish Darwinia through their own website and manufactured a small number of units that were distributed into UK retail. But true to form, the entrepreneurs behind the game recently signed a deal with Valve's Steam system for online sales and distribution of the game worldwide. With Introversion's unique innovation and Valve's powerful marketing and distribution expertise, the delivery of Darwinia over Steam has proven to be a great commercial success.

Thomas Arundel, Sales Director at Introversion added, "Finding a publisher has been hard work. One minute they want original titles but minimal risk, yet when presented with an original, finished game that just needs marketing they appear stumped. Sometimes it makes you wonder what exactly publishers DO want? When we heard that Valve was opening up Steam to 3rd parties, we just had to speak to them. It's definitely been one of the best things we did last year and Valve have been really fun to work with."

The IGF Awards Ceremony is open to all GDC attendees and will be held on March 22nd from 6:30-8:30pm. Darwinia together will all the nominees will be playable at the IGF Pavilion and forms an integral part of GDC, which runs from 22nd-24th March in San Jose, California.