Eighteen Competition nominees and eight additional speakers announced for Ludicious - Zürich Game Festival in January

Zürich, Switzerland – 13 December 2017 – A short list of 18 games have today been announced for the Ludicious Awards 2018. The list highlights the very best creative talent from a diverse selection of international studios and student developer teams. The nominees all hope to win a share of the impressive 12’000 EUR offered in collective prize money.

“263 games from 47 countries were submitted to the competition this year,” said the festival’s Artistic and Conference Director Tobias Kopka. “What we asked for, and found, are the most exciting, creative and original new games on any platform. In particular this year, we encouraged developers to submit projects which contain a strong innovative aspect. This could be in any area; from the game mechanic through to the narrative, or even business model.”

The nominees and award categories are as follows:

The Innovation in Game Award (international studios or developers, 8’000 EUR prize)

• Around Mars (Iran)
• Blind Drive (Israel)
• Do Not Feed the Monkeys (Spain)
• Everything is going to be OK (USA)
• Figment (Denmark)
• Hitchhiker (Germany)
• Orwell (Germany
• Rock of Ages II: Bigger and Boulder (Chile)
• The Almost Gone (Belgium)
• The Sexy Brutale (UK)
• Vignettes (France)
• Witchball (USA)

The Emerging Talent Award (international students or university teams, 4’000 EUR prize)

• Isometric Epilepsy (Cologne Game Lab, Germany)
• Letters (Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland)
• Seek Etyliv (Queen Mary's University of London, UK)
• Shadow Seeker (AZAD University South Tehran Branch, Iran)
• SHIRO (School of Art and Design Kassel, Germany)
• Tell Me What You See (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Last year’s Ludicious winner was Reigns by François Alliot, aka Nerial. Published by Devolver Digital, Reigns has now sold in excess of 1.8 million copies.

The winners will be announced on January 19, 2018 at the Ludicious & SGDA Awards Night, where the SGDA (Swiss Game Developers Association) will also announce the winners of its Swiss Game Awards.

New speakers added to the conference line-up

Ludicious has also published the name of eight additional speakers joining the conference line-up of Switzerland’s most important gaming event: Lauren Cason(ustwogames, Monument Valley 2, best Mobile Game at the 2017 Game Awards), Chris Bourassa (Red Hook Studios), Jeff Tangsoc (Power Up Audio), Menno van Pelt-Deen (Lapp, Dutch Game Garden), Morten Brunbjerg (Writer), Vlad Micu (VG Visionary), Ste Curran (One Life Left) and Philomena Schwab (Stray Fawn Studios, Zürich).

So far twenty speakers have been announced. They include:

• Alden Kroll, who has been a designer at Valve for over 12 years, working on Steam as well as on games such as Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead. Alden currently works as a designer on the Steam store, the Steam publishing tools, and various community features such as Steam Workshop.
• Callum Underwood is in charge of signing new games at the Swedish developer Raw Fury.
• Daniel Dociu who is currently overseeing visual development across all development teams under the Amazon Game Studios umbrella.
• Dhaunae de Vir who is Business Development Manager for White Wolf Entertainment (Vampire: The Masquerade), a brand evangelist, a videogames ambassador, and an eSports consultant.
• Julie Heyde & Horatiu Roman who are known in the gaming industry for their game jams and VR games as VRUnicorns.
• Kate Edwards who is CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, and the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).
• Patryk Grzeszczuk who as a Marketing Director at 11 bit studios has been responsible for developing marketing/advertising strategies for This War of Mine,Beat Cop, and Frostpunk.

Further information can be found on the official Ludicious website at www.ludicious.ch/conference2018. The complete speaker list of Ludicious 2018 will be published before the end of this year. The Ludicious festival will take place from 18 - 21 January 2018 in Zurich, Switzerland, and offers its visitors a extended weekend packed with talks, games, networking opportunities and much more. Tickets are now available at http://www.ludicious.ch/tickets