A MAZE. / BERLIN 2019. Award Winners
The 8th edition of A MAZE. / Berlin 2019 – International Games and Playful Media Festival welcomed international professionals, digital artists, game developers, journalists, labels and visitors – to be continued on Saturday, April 13th. There were more than 40 participating nations and more than 100 games and playful media installations at the festival.
The highlight of the festival: Â the new location (SEZ) & the 8th International A MAZE. Awards are chosen by the international and multidisciplinary jury:
·    Anita Sarkeesian (USA)
·    Nina Kiel (Germany)
·    Adriaan de Jongh (Netherlands)
·    Peter Lee (South Korea)
·    VÃt Å isler (Czech Republic)
MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE JURY: https://amazestuff.tumblr.com/post/183030941519/jury-members-of-the-a-maze-awards-2019
8th International A MAZE. Awards – the winners are... Most Amazing Game Award: Kassinn (Iceland) – Huldufugl / http://huldufugl.is/kassinn
The jury: In most games with actors, they are noticed in cutscenes. Kassinn takes a very different approach and takes out the code for NPCs. It doesn't feel like talking to a machine because you are not. In adding actors to a singleplayer VR environment, Huldufugl transformed their work into a new kind of multiplayer that we could only describe as live theater gaming.
Human Human Machine Award: Blabyrinth (Canada) – Sleeping Beast Games / http://blabyrinth.com
The jury: Blabyrinth uses mobiles as a platform for analog communication. The experience of being together in a multi-room escape room, screaming for help, discussing solutions, and putting your heads together to collect clues to make it through the randomized puzzles is all about structuring chaos. Blabyrinth is the definition of a game played between humans with some help from a machine.
Digital Moment Award:
Consume Me (USA) – Jenny Jiao Hsia & AP Thomson / http://playconsume.me
The jury: It is impossible to balance life. Consume Me makes this perfectly clear and raises a bold statement about the pressure of society. By combining hundreds of little things into a big narrative, packaging it into a beautiful style with challenging physicality, it brings this topic to very different audiences. It's OK to fail. It's normal. Don't fear.
Long Feature Award: :THE LONGING: (Germany) – STUDIO SEUFZ / http://www.399d-23h-59m-59s.com/ The jury: Idle games are often about waiting. :The Longing: manages to make it about anticipation instead, focusing on narrative experiences, which use time wisely and being patient as a game mechanic. It's not about the many days you have to spend until the end, it's about what you can do until that moment.
Explorer Award:
Operation Jane Walk (Austria) – Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel / http://leonhardmuellner.at/operation-janewalk/
The jury: In our time, we saw a lot of beautiful and detailed gameworlds, which were just used as containers for combat mechanics. Operation Jane Walk says "No!" - With voice acting, sound samples and whatever their virtual combat-avatars can express, they used an existing and live multiplayer game for a fun, educational guided tour for other players, making this noninteractive game somehow feel extremely interactive. We want more tours to all of our favorite worlds!
Audience Award: Sticky Cats (South Africa) – The Bones Brothers / http://stickycatsgame.com/
Sticky Cats is a fumblecore party game in which each player controls a sticky cat with a craving for fish. Players must traverse a house, steal a fish, and make a dash for the exit while sticking to everything and causing mayhem along the way.
Humble New Talent Award: lowpolis (Russian Federation) - Maria Fedotova, Danila Yakovlev https://lowpolis.itch.io The jury: All five developers/teams have shown great talent with their work and should be on everyone's radar: 5am Games (Switzerland), lowpolis (Russian Federation), Moshe Linke (Germany), Project.99 (South Korea), and Simona Maiorano (Italy).
We chose Maria Fedotova and Danila Yakovlev from lowpolis as winners of this years Humble New Talent Award because we are excited about their small games about queerness and general friendship between humans. They’re also about secrecy, hiding, and censorship. Although they look very polished, they are still very experimental and bring their voice and perspective in all kinds of forms to the games community. We are excited to highlight this emerging team and look forward to what they will achieve with the power of Humble Bundle.
The Humble New Talent Award rewards a deserving emerging artist from the A MAZE. community. This award is an opportunity to highlight new global talents, whose work have created a buzz over the last year. The winner of the award receives an exclusive deal to create a Humble Original and $15,000 in prize money. Thanks to these important collaborations, A MAZE. and Humble Bundle hope to support the creation and accomplishment of a-mazing future projects.
(picture with Award Winners that were at the ceremony, the team behind Sticky Cats and Operation Jane Walk and team Lowpolis were not there)
All the nominees for the A MAZE. Award: https://2019.award.amaze-berlin.de/games/nominees
All the nominees for the Humble New Talent Award:
https://amazestuff.tumblr.com/post/183215822984/congratulation-to-the-nominees-for-the-2nd-humble
