IGF 2006 Modding Competition Finalists Announced

The organizers of the 2006 Independent Games Festival have announced the finalists in this year's inaugural IGF Modding Competition, highlighting the best in innovative, creative independent 'mods' created in Half-Life 2, NeverWinter Nights, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Doom 3. The prize pool for this new IGF Mod Competition is $2,500 for the 'Best Mod' winner in each of the four game categories, meaning a total of $10,000 in cash for Mod Competition winners in the first ever iteration of this new contest, for which winners will be announced at Game Developers Conference in San Jose this March. The finalists for the IGF Best Mod - Half-Life 2 category are UrbanLegend Games' 'authentic' school sports recreation Dodgeball: Source, Team Dystopia's cyberpunk-themed total conversion Dystopia, The Guildhall at SMU's lush student-created fantasy mod Eclipse, Hidden: Source Team's 'Predator'-like hunting title Hidden: Source, and Agora Games' strategic team-based shooter Plan Of Attack. As for the IGF Best Mod - Neverwinter Nights category, finalists include Scrotok's skilful player DM (dungeon master)-controlled Bitter Harvest, Ernest Noa's classic RPG dungeon crawl Hythum II: The Halls Of Kilgirn, BRC's multi-perspective mod with console RPG-style gameplay upgrades Rose Of Eternity - Chapter 1, MadWombat's epic Fable-style adventure Runes Of Blood, and The Guildhall at SMU's completely overhauled action-RPG mod The Hunt. Regarding the highly competitive IGF Best Mod - Unreal Tournament 2004 category, finalists comprise LudoCraft's "surreal insect-laden action game" Dragonfly Variations, Eigensoft's adorable hamster-ball action mod HamsterBash, Lotus.Arts' Jade Empire-esque third-person Asian action mod Path Of Vengeance, The Art Institute of Vancouver's multiplayer survival horror mod The Awakening, and HELM Systems' epic fantasy action multiplayer mod The Soulkeeper. Finally, the finalists for IGF Best Mod - Doom 3 are Platinum Arts's co-op 'classic Doom' throwback Last Man Standing, and Games[CC]'s closed captioning modification Doom3[CC] - no other entries in this category were of finalist quality. This final announcement follows the earlier announcement of the IGF Student Showcase winners, and, alongside December's IGF Main Competition finalists, comprises the final of the three main IGF Competition announcements for this year. The finalist mods will be playable at the IGF Pavilion and a separate Mod Pavilion at Game Developers Conference in San Jose this March. In addition, as previously referenced, the Mod Competition winners in each category will be announced at the IGF Awards Ceremony on March 22nd during GDC 2006.