Mobile games are very well represented at the Independent Games Festival Awards this year
With Mutazione leading the pack for nominations
The Independent Games Festival has unveiled the finalists for its 22nd annual awards and mobile games are very well represented. In particular, Mutazione has been nominated in four different categories – excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Narrative and the Grand Prize itself.
We're big fans of Mutazione here and our readers are too, with the game being nominated for the Pocket Gamer People's Choice Award. Being included in that list prompted our very own Dave Aubrey to try the game, which he quickly lavished with praised upon completing it.
Elsewhere on the IGF nominations, Astrologaster is a contender in the Excellence in Audio category. This is another game we've enjoyed here at Pocket Gamer but it definitely slipped under the radar a tad. Cameron made sure it was acknowledged as one of last year's great games in his list of great games you might have missed in 2019 though.
Unsurprisingly, Vectronom has also been nominated for its Excellence in Audio, which is easily the most mobile populated category with three in total. Particularly since beyond that, Manifold Garden was also listed as an honourable mention for the same award.
There were a few other noteworthy mentions for mobile games in other categories too. Guildlings, which is available through Apple Arcade, was acknowledged for its design whilst Philipp Stollenmayer's Song of Bloom got a nod of appreciation for its visual style.
It's great to see so many mobile games up for awards after a cracking year for them in 2019. Of course, not all of these titles are solely available on mobile but they all play just as well on phones as they do on other platforms.
Slay the Spire is also nominated for the Grand prize and though it's not available on mobile at the moment, we know it's going to be eventually. The rogue-like deck builder has been delayed fairly recently so we'll have to wait a while longer yet but I'm sure it'll make yet another great addition to mobile gaming.
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