IGF 2013 sees record entries for its Student Competition

The organizers of the 15th annual Independent Games Festival -- the longest-running and largest festival relating to independent games worldwide -- are proud to announce another year of record entry numbers for IGF 2013's Student Competition. In total, this year's Student Competition took in more than 300 game entries across all platforms -- PC, console and mobile -- from a wide diversity of the most prestigious universities and games programs from around the world. Together with the record Main Competition entries, this year's IGF has taken in nearly 900 total entries -- the largest number in the festival's history across the Main and Student competitions. This year's Student Competition includes entries such as the DigiPen-developed Perspective, which combines 2D platforming with 3D first-person navigation, and Nevermind, an experimental horror title that uses biofeedback to manage player stress and change difficulty on the fly. Other entries include the physics-based tower defense title The White Laboratory, the stealth horror game Blackwell's Asylum, and the experimental narrative title Snowfall. The above are just a small selection of the games now available for browsing via IGF.com, where you'll find more information, screenshots and video for each of the IGF Student Competition entries. The festival's organizers have added an official Student Competition JSON feed, added to the existing Main Competition feed, updated every 30 minutes from live back end data. Teams can update info on their games and have the official entry page change, and third parties are welcome to use this feed to make their own custom IGF entry lists and pages. As a part of the larger Independent Games Festival, the Student Showcase highlights up-and-coming talent from worldwide university programs, and has served as the venue which first premiered numerous now-widely-recognized names including DigiPen's Narbacular Drop and Tag: The Power of Paint, which would evolve first into Valve's acclaimed Portal, with the latter brought on-board for Portal 2. Others include USC's The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom (later released by 2K Games for XBLA and PC); Hogeschool van de Kunsten's The Blob (later becoming acclaimed console titleDe Blob); and early USC/thatgamecompany title Cloud, from the studio that would go on to develop PlayStation 3 arthouse mainstays like Flower and Journey. This year's Student IGF entries will be checked and distributed to a host of notable industry judges for evaluation before Student Showcase winners are announced in January 2013. The Best Student Game winner will be awarded at the IGF ceremony during the Game Developers Conference 2013 in San Francisco next March.