SAN FRANCISCO, July 1 — Sixteen winners have surfaced from the vibrant, diverse pool of talent at the Brazil’s Independent Games Festival, with Frostpunk taking Best Game, France’s Dead Cells awarded Best Gameplay, trans-American journey Where the Water Tastes Like Wine winning Best Story, and No Heroes Here clinching both Best Brazilian Game and a public vote.

Co-operative castle-defence game No Heroes Here (noheroeshere.com) became the 2018 BIG Festival’s only multi-award winner after the PC, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch title was named both Best Brazilian Game and winner of the popular vote.

It was iOS and Android action strategy Iron Marines, from the Uruguayan studio behind established hit Kingdom Rush, that won overall Best Latin American Game (ironmarines.com), while Peru-based Hafiz Azman won Best Sound for upcoming one-button actioner Rhythm Doctor (rhythmDrcom,) and WIP beat boxing battler One Beat Min (twitter.com/onebeatmin) won Best Entertainment Game.

Colombia’s Below the Game won the Innovation award for June’s Windows PC word-powered medieval adventure Haimrik (store.steampowered.com/app/492180) and Brazilian non-combat adventure Lenin the Lion, (leninthelion.wordpress.com) about an albino big cat’s quest to overcome depressive symptoms, won the Social Impact award.

The June 28 award show was not all Latin America, though, with post-apocalyptic ice age city management PC simulation Frostpunk (frostpunkgame.com) taking overall Best Game, computer and console action exploration sensation Dead Cells (dead-cells.com) hailed from France’s Motion Twin co-operative and won Best Gameplay, and US folk tale travelogue Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (wherethewatertasteslikewine.com), with its diversity of writing and voice acting talent, received Best Narrative.

Similarly, charming cherry quest adventure for iOS, Android and PC, Chuchel (Czech Republic, chuchel.net) won Best Art, while the artistic Luna (US, luna.funomena.com) claimed Best Virtual Reality Game.

Back to Brazil, and it was Mac, PC and Linux programming puzzle game Marvellous Inc whose official webpage (marvelloussoft.github.io) convincingly masquerades as a corporate website for its fictional company, which won one of two educational categories, the other going to Mompas, while Fofuuu received Best Children’s Game award.

Dead Cells wasn’t the evening’s only French mention after Brazilian-made PSG Football Freestyle won the Best Brand Tie-in award for an official Paris Saint-Germain FC game, currently nearing release.

Last but by no means least, Switch and Steam-bound squidgy octopus racer Muddledash (muddledash.com) made by a two-person team located in Scotland and Australia respectively, now approaches its July 10 launch having added BIG’s Best Multiplayer to its collection of awards. —AFP-Relaxnews