The Independent Games Festival (IGF) juries are announcing the Main Competition finalists for its historic 15th annual awards - nominating nearly 30 outstanding independent game titles to come out of the worldwide community in the past year. This year's finalists for the most prestigious independent video game awards and showcase were each picked by a discipline-specific set of expert juries, following playthroughs and recommendations of the 580+ IGF entries from over 200 top independent game experts. Some of the multiple-nominated games for this year's extremely diverse Festival include Cardboard Computer's 'magical realist adventure game' Kentucky Route Zero, Subset Games' spaceship sim 'Roguelike-like' FTL, and Richard Hofmeier's stark, dense street vendor simulator Cart Life. The first-ever Excellence in Narrative Award is also showcasing unique titles such as Blendo Games' quirky 'first-person short story' Thirty Flights Of Loving, Auntie Pixelante's autobiographical game about a trans woman undergoing HRT, Dys4ia, and The Fullbright Company's abandoned house mystery Gone Home. The Nuovo Award, once again honoring 'abstract... and unconventional game development' of all kinds, also saw many standout games competing for its $5,000 prize, including Sleeping Beast's irreverent local co-op sci-fi smartphone game Spaceteam, Michael Brough's 'one move a day for 100 days' VESPER.5, and Mousechief's multi-generational family history title 7 Grand Steps. The full list of finalists for the 2013 Independent Games Festival, with jury-picked "honorable mentions" to those top-quality games that didn't quite make it to finalist status, is as follows:

Excellence In Visual Art

Incredipede (Northway Games and Thomas Shahan) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Guacamelee! (Drinkbox Studios) Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base) Year Walk (Simogo) Honorable mentions: Fly'n (Ankama Play); Eleven (Christoffer Hedborg, Datahowler); The Bridge (Ty Taylor and Mario Castaneda); Thomas Was Alone (Mike Bithell, David Housden and Danny Wallace); Hundreds (Semi Secret feat. aeiowu)

Excellence In Narrative

Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games) Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante) Gone Home (The Fullbright Company) Honorable mentions: Goblet Grotto (thecatamites, j chastain, NEW VADERS); Analogue: A Hate Story (Christine Love); Papo & Yo (Minority Media); The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe); 7 Grand Steps (Mousechief)

Technical Excellence

StarForge (CodeHatch) Perspective (DigiPen Widdershins) Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation) Intrusion 2 (Aleksey Abramenko) LiquidSketch (Tobias Neukom) Honorable mentions: Mobiloid (Monty Melby); Skulls Of The Shogun (17-BIT); Foldit (University of Washington); 140 (Jeppe Carlsen); Gateways (Smudged Cat Games)

Excellence In Design

Samurai Gunn (Beau Blyth) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth) Super Hexagon (Terry Cavanagh) Super Space ______ (David Scamehorn & Alexander Baard/DigiPen) Honorable mentions: Spaceteam (Henry Smith); Helix (Michael Brough); Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation); Rymdkapsel (Martin Jonasson, Grapefrukt Games); Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)

Excellence In Audio

Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Bad Hotel (Lucky Frame) 140 (Jeppe Carlsen) Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games) Pixeljunk 4AM (Q-Games) Honorable mentions: Thomas Was Alone (Mike Bithell, David Housden and Danny Wallace); Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation); Gone Home (The Fullbright Company); Fract OSC (Phosfiend Systems); Dust: An Elysian Tale (Humble Hearts)

Nuovo Award

[Designed 'to honor abstract... and unconventional game development'.] Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier) Spaceteam (Henry Smith) Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante) Bientot l'ete (Tale of Tales) 7 Grand Steps (Mousechief) MirrorMoon (SantaRagione + BloodyMonkey) VESPER.5 (Michael Brough) Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation) Honorable mentions: Renga (wallFour); Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth); Frog Fractions (Twinbeard); Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games); The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe)

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier) Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer) Honorable mentions: Gone Home (The Fullbright Company); Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games); The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe); Super Hexagon (Terry Cavanagh); Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth) All finalist games will be playable at an expanded IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2013 Expo floor from March 27-29, 2013, at San Francisco's Moscone Center, as part of a week of independent game-related content that also includes the Independent Games Summit (March 25th-26th), and the IGF Awards ceremony itself. The IGF Awards, where this year's IGF winners will be unveiled, will be held on the evening of Wednesday, March 27th at the Moscone, alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards. IGF Awards recipients will receive nearly $60,000 of prizes in various categories, including the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. As part of this year's event, all IGF Main Competition finalists will receive the opportunity to accept a distribution agreement for Valve's Steam, a leading platform for distribution in today's burgeoning independent gaming market. The Independent Games Festival was established by UBM Tech's Game Network (which also owns Gamasutra) to encourage the rise of independent game development and to recognize the best independent game titles. Finalists and winners since its 1999 debut have included landmark games such as Braid, World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, Portal predecessor Narbacular Drop, Minecraft, and a host of others. IGF Student Showcase award winners, contending for the Best Student Game award at the Festival, will be announced on Monday, January 14th, and voting for an IGF Audience Award winner from all Main Competition finalists will kick off in early February. (In addition, the sponsor-supported Microsoft Studios Prize, awarded to Capy's Super T.I.M.E. Force in 2012, is still to be decided from all IGF Main Competition entrants.) For more information on the Independent Games Festival, please visit the official IGF website - and for those interested in registering for GDC 2013, which includes the Independent Games Summit, the IGF Pavilion and the IGF Awards Ceremony, please visit the Game Developers Conference website.