The organisers behind the Freeplay Awards have announced the finalists for the 2024 iteration of the show. As in past years, the award categories celebrate ingenuity and innovation in the local Australian and New Zealand game development scenes, with a particular focus on highlighting independent studios and creators.
As noted by the Freeplay team, there’s a wide spread of nominees in this year’s cohort, with one project – Search for the Golden Crown Plant – being helmed a 7-year-old boy and his father. Beyond this neat nod, Freeplay has also included a vast array of popular Australian-made games in its nominations, selected from a “record-breaking” 209 submissions across multiple categories.
This year’s awards cover titles released over the last three years, with the submission range covering April 2021 to late 2023.
Read: Freeplay’s mission to build a sustainable games festival – Interview
“The response to this year’s Awards round went beyond all our expectations, and it’s been a
pleasure to see people from all sorts of backgrounds in games and play put their hat in the ring,” Creatrix Tiara, Freeplay’s Awards Lead said in a press release.
“I am especially heartened by the entries from people working in other art forms such as immersive performance – as a theatre-maker myself, I see a lot of potential in the ways that games and other art forms such as performance art can intertwine, and the 2024 Freeplay Awards can serve as an important precedent.”
Here’s the full list of finalists for the Freeplay Awards 2024. We congratulate all the nominees on their achievements.
Freeplay Awards 2024: Full list of finalists
ACROSS THE DITCH
- Arcane Crimes Division (Imaginary Empire)
- Idyll (Demi Schänzel)
- Seedlings (Bardsley Creative)
DESIGN
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
- Spin Rhythm XD (Super Spin Digital)
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
- KILLBUG (Samurai Punk)
VISUAL ART
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
- You Will (Not) Remain (Bad Eldritches)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
AUDIO
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
- Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Summerfall Studios)
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- You Will (Not) Remain (Bad Eldritches)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
NARRATIVE
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
- Trail of the Wretched (Xavier Bell, Jason Reagen, Khoa Ho)
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
- Amarantus (ub4q)
- Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Brent Arnold)
NON-DIGITAL
- Owlbear Omelette (Caradoc Games)
- Rainbow Paths (Helen Kwok & Chad Toprak)
- Mesozoic Mayhem (Craig Somerton)
- TRADE (Barking Spider Creative)
- Fragged Empire 2 (Wade Dyer)
- The Score (Tin Star Games)
MICRO-GAME
- The Search for the Golden Crown Plant (Tom and Dad Games)
- Seethe and Scab (Max Myers)
- Bin Chicken Has A Go! (T-Dog eXtreme)
- In Search of Lost Scroll (Vidya Rajan)
- Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Sure! (Toot Games)
- Sometimes (Elliot Cox)
EXPERIMENTAL
- Grasping (Duncan Corrigan)
- THE SOUL OF TOO BIRDS (Nonsense Machine)
- In Search of Lost Scroll (Vidya Rajan)
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
- The Hotline (Kasey Gambling)
- Quite Contrary (Helen Kwok & Chad Toprak)
EMERGING DEVELOPERS
- Dial In (Julian Lia)
- Florrae (Perlinators)
- Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Brent Arnold)
- You Will (Not) Remain (Bad Eldritches)
- In Search of Lost Scroll (Vidya Rajan)
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
The 2024 Freeplay Awards ceremony will take place on 29 February 2024 at the Fringe Common Rooms in Trades Hall, Melbourne, Australia. You can learn more about the event on the Freeplay website.
