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Welcome the IGF Juries for the Student, Nuovo, and Visual Art Awards at GDC 2025

The 2025 Independent Games Festival Awards is coming up in less than two months, and we have the second group of developers who will be judging this year's groundbreaking selections.

We're excited to reveal the second group of jurors for the 2025 IGF Awards (head here for the first group). The IGF juries are made up of experts in specific disciplines. They will play, discuss, and evaluate the finalists in the 2025 IGF Awards, taking place at GDC 2025

Save Up To $400 On Your GDC Pass (Through Jan. 31)

Here are the jurors selected to appraise the Best Student Game, Nuovo Award, and Excellence in Visual Art categories, along with this year's nominated games: 

Best Student Game

A Dual Ascent (Mountain Toad Entertainment /  Rubika Supinfogame)
DisplaceMen (Eversea Club / leafaleaves)
Growth Spurt: A Meandering Intermission into the Afterhours of a Miscalculation (Games for my Computer)
Slot Waste (Vinny Roca / pickpanpuck productions)
The WereCleaner (Howlin' Hugs / USC Games)
Year Unknown (Julian Heuser)

Heather Cole: A professor of Game Design and Interactive Media at West Virginia University and founder of MonRiverGames, a non-profit 501(c)(3) community game studio. Her work is best seen through a producer's lens within these entities on social media and itch.io. Beyond playing games, she also enjoys hiking, traveling, and foraging in her free time. 

Tamara Duplantis: A Louisiana-born digital media artist, experimental composer, and lecturer in the Art & Design: Games & Playable Media Program at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she has mentored several dozen student teams in developing their undergraduate capstone projects. Her artistic practice focuses on reclaiming outdated and neglected forms of technology as new interfaces for musical play, and creating works that express queer Louisianan identity in a time of climate catastrophe. As part of this work, she performs her experimental Game Boy music performance games under the name Tambalaya.

Claudia Garza-Gonzalez: Regional Chair of the Academic Digital Art Department (West Center Region), School of Architecture, Art and Design from Tecnologico de Monterrey and Assistant Professor of Game Design.

Lindsay Grace: Knight Chair in Interactive Media and director of the University of Miami Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media. He is vice president for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance, 2019 recipient of the Games for Change Vanguard award, designer/developer/artist behind scores of indie games, and author of several books, including Doing Things with Games, Social Impact through Design, Love and Affection in Games: A Design Primer, and Black Game Studies.

Carol Mertz: An award-winning game designer. She's led development on nearly a dozen released board games for Exploding Kittens and has worked on a diverse range of independent games, including HELLCOUCH, With You, We should talk, and many more.

Andy Nealen: A game creator and scholar, artist and music maker, computer scientist, architect, engineer, associate professor at USC, and co-host of Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games.

Ty Underwood: Department chair of the Game Design and Development school at Lake Washington Institute of Technology. Ty has worked in games for 12 years and co-founded Comradery.co, a co-operatively owned subscription platform for game designers, artists, and activists.

Nuovo Award

Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder) 
Despelote (Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena / Panic) 
Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity (Sam Atlas) 
Ginger (Kevin Du / lizu ktap)
individualism in the dead-internet age: an anti-big tech asset flip shovelware rant manifesto (alienmelon) 
Starship Home (Creature) 
tapeçaria (tapestry) (mut/moochi (with help from plunderludics working group))
The Exit 8 (KOTAKE CREATE / Active Gaming Media Inc)

Pippin Barr: An experimental game designer and Associate Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University. His work addresses everything from contemporary art to the nature of videogames and videogame technologies. Pippin cohosts the podcast GAMETHING and his latest book on game design is The Stuff Games Are Made Of.

Dr. Justin Bortnick: A designer and researcher whose work centers on digital narratives, game storytelling, political games, and worldbuilding. His work has been featured on outlets such as Kotaku, Game Developer, Polygon, and more, and he has shown work and given talks at events such as the Electronic Literature Organization, IndieCade, and the Game Developers Conference. He has written and/or designed for projects such as the smart toy “Octobo,” the video games Frog Fractions 2 and Static Sky, the film Reality Games, and regularly consults for commercial video games.  Dr. Bortnick is also the president of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation and a co-founder of NarraScope, the annual conference on narrative games. Since 2013, he has hosted the game developer interview series, Red Pages Podcast.

Wen-Wei Chang: An independent designer and the head of the experience design team "Team9." In 2022, he released the Chinese character puzzle RPG game Word Game as a producer. Chang is dedicated to creating engaging works that resonate with everyday life and offer new perspectives through diverse media—including game design, visual design, product design, exhibition curation, and experience design.

Prof. A.M. Darke: An experimental media artist, game designer, and founder of Afro Hair Library. With a focus on Black-centered storytelling and design, they bring critical insights and creative vision to games, amplifying narratives that reshape media and challenge conventional frameworks.

Melos Han-Tani: A Tokyo-based game designer and composer who worked on the Anodyne series as well as the upcoming games Angeline Era and Danchi Days. He helps organize the design journal "After Journey's End," and he enjoys walks and blogging on Substack & Backloggd.

Allison Yang Jing: An award-winning game producer and senior editor at Initium Media, where she founded the Game On channel. She is a prominent figure in the art game community and advocates for politically engaged game development, creating games that explore cultural and social issues. Yang curates game-focused exhibitions and contributes to international panels and publications on the intersection of games, art, and activism. She is a 2024 Ford Global Fellow and a Maynard 200 Fellow, known for her innovative work in blending art, technology, and political themes in gaming.

Jennifer Schneidereit: A game designer, programmer, and creative director. In 2010, she founded Nyamyam, an award-winning independent game developer based in the UK, and she specializes in beautifully crafted games with unconventional concepts.

Sylvie: A hobbyist game designer who has created more than 100 small and unusual freeware video games, ranging from less than a minute to several hours in length. Her eccentric exploration platformer Sylvie Lime was nominated for the Nuovo award in 2023.

Excellence in Visual Art

Children of the Sun (René Rother / Devolver Digital) 
Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder) 
Hauntii (Moonloop Games / Firestoke) 
Judero (Talha and Jack Co, J. King-Spooner, Talha Kaya) 
Nine Sols (RedCandleGames) 
Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper / Panic)

aurahack: An illustrator and graphic designer. Based in Canada and working freelance, she has contributed art to a number of projects such as The Shrouded Isle, VA11 HALL-A, and Heaven Will Be Mine.

Noel Berry: Co-creator of Celeste and many other small indie games!

Marlowe Dobbe: Art Director at Mega Crit Games. Organizer for Portland Indie Game Squad. 

Marielle Kho: Lead environment artist on Darkest Dungeon 2 at Red Hook Studios. She has 15 years of professional experience as a 3D Artist in games, film, and television. She loves her dog and reading horror literature year-round.

Victoria Lijaya: Austin-based gameplay animator, a passionate game developer, creator, and storyteller. Currently working on Exodus, a sci-fi action adventure RPG by Archetype Entertainment. Previously worked at Hi-Rez Studios and Blizzard Entertainment.

Greg Lobanov: An indie game designer who makes goofy, heartfelt adventures like Beastieball, Wandersong, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale.

Gianna "Gigi" Ruggiero: Senior Concept Artist at Doublefine and Illustrator of "Every Night is Pizza Night". Lover of dogs, playing old games with friends, and bread. 

Aura Triolo: She's been animating indie games for over a decade on titles such as Wanderstop, Dungeons of Dredmor, and Overgrowth. She's been featured on IGF.com and GameDeveloper.com for her advice on submitting to the IGF Awards. She's currently animation lead at Ivy Road.

Early Rates Have Been Extended Through Jan. 31, Don't Miss Out!

Head here to check out all the finalists in the 2025 Independent Games Festival. The winners will be announced at the IGF Awards on Wednesday, March 19 (with a simultaneous broadcast on GDC Twitch) at the Game Developers Conference, which takes place at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. For those eager to see the awards for themselves, make sure to buy a pass for GDC 2025!

GDC returns this March 17-21, 2025, and our Early Rate is currently live (for a limited time)! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC2025 hashtag on social media. 

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