From the art director of Journey and Flower, ABZÛ is a beautiful underwater adventure that evokes the dream of diving. Players can immerse in a vibrant ocean world full of mystery and bursting with color and life. They can perform fluid acrobatics as the diver, discover hundreds of unique species based on real creatures and form a powerful connection with the abundant sea life, interacting with sea life and exploring treasures.

Alexander Doggus is a wheelchair-bound old-timer who used to be the world’s greatest show dog. Jaded by his exuberant past, Alexander now cares only about his favorite tennis ball. The player guides Alexander through the world using a trackball to roll his in-game tennis ball, Alexander always following close behind. Complete with an original soundtrack, Alexander Doggus carefully combines 2D and 3D elements to create a richly textured world.

Players help the blind protagonist to find a cat whom she befriended, but that disappeared one day. With the means of noises, smells and touching the environment, players slowly uncover the world surrunding the girl and the blank canvas, that illustrates this world in her head, is filled.

Closer is a cooperative game for two people: to start you must stand close together, and to succeed you must work together. Closer uses a Kinect to track the movement of the players’ bodies, and draws a single shared playable character exactly at the space between the players, growing and shrinking with their proximity and moving as they move. The players must navigate difficulties, win points, and avoid death together, as each player has exactly equal control in the outcome of the game.

One physical space, four big buttons and codes to be cracked! Players have to decipher the on-screen clues and run around to bash the buttons in the hidden sequence. One may have to decrypt symbols, unpick circuit diagrams or rifle through spy photos, but one thing’s for sure: the best codebreakers work as a team!

Colorena is a team-sidescroller in which the players have to interact with each other to complete the game. The specially for the game designed helmets with colored sheets doesn’t allow the players to see all the graphical elements of the game world. Players have to work in a team and to communicate to complete the Colorena. Colorena was made during a seminar of the games master at HAW Hamburg.

Colorena is nominated for the Creative Gaming Award in the Category Most Innovative Newcomer Game.

Dark Room Sex Game is a multiplayer audio game. Players see a black screen and the gameplay is based on sound and feeling. By finding a rythm and slowly increasing motions, players reach the goal, a virtual orgasm.

 Deep within the Shropshire countryside, the village of Yaughton stands empty. Toys lie forgotten in the playground, the wind blows quarantine leaflets around the silent churchyard. The birds lie where they have fallen. Strange voices haunt the radio waves as uncollected washing hangs listlessly on the line. Above it all, the telescopes of the Observatory point out at dead stars and endless darkness. And someone remains behind, to try and unravel the mystery.

Players can experience the rich, deep adventure and investigate the last days of Yaughton Valley. They have to uncover the traces of the vanished community, discover fragments of events and memories to piece together the mystery of the apocalypse. Featuring a beautiful, detailed open-world and a haunting soundtrack, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is non-linear storytelling at its best.

The Chinese Room

The Chinese Room is an award-winning game development studio based in Brighton, UK, best known for creating experimental first-person games. The small studio focuses on innovation and immersion. They want to use this amazing medium to tell great stories and explore incredible new worlds.

Under cloud filled skies, the player travels across the seemingly endless dried-up sea, littered with the remains of a once vibrant seafaring civilization. The game’s world is largely devoid of life, yet filled with places to explore and history to discover.
While the greater goal of the journey remains to be uncovered by the player, urgent short-term necessities call for immediate action. The train-like vehicle used to travel the plains needs to be fueled, maintained and upgraded to master the challenges that lie ahead…

FAR: Lone Sails is nominated for the Creative Gaming Award in the category Most Innovative Newcomer Game.

by Through Games

FRU is a puzzle platformer that features an innovative use of Kinect, in which the player’s silhouette becomes a “portal” between two worlds. Solving puzzles by strategically positioning one’s body, combining physical interaction with traditional platforming, FRU introduces new ways of interacting with a game. The game features four completely different chapters, all based around innovative use of the player’s silhouette, with a unique twist to each of them. In addition to moving and balancing the body to solve levels, players will also find themselves swimming inside a silhouette, striking crazy poses to activate contraptions, and awkwardly tiptoeing to avoid dangerous hazards!
FRU is nominated for the Creative Gaming Award in the category “most creative game”.