GDC Awards

The Game Developers Conference came to a close and the big award winners were Gears of War (Best Game, Tech, Visual Arts), Okami (Character Design, Innovation), and Wii Sports (Game Design, Innovation. And lucky me got to write the guidebooks for two of them, with the third not being the type of game that would ever require a strategy guide. Yeah, 2006 was a good year for me.

The other big winner at the GDC was Aquaria, an adventure game set underwater. It won for Best Independent Game and took home a prize of $200,000. Very nice. Here's a blurb Aquaria's website which you can visit here.

Aquaria is an action-oriented, non-linear 2D side-scrolling game. Using an intuitive and fluid mouse control system, Naija can deftly swim through and explore a massive, handcrafted world that is teeming with undersea life. Along the way, she will encounter literally hundreds of different types of plants and animals and explore many ingame miles of hidden caves, lost ruins, and other strange places.

Aquaria looks and sounds great, but I really have to ask one question: How does a game that's not even out yet win an award? Aquaria isn't due out till Spring 2007 according to its own website.