Here’s This Year’s Winners Of The Australian Game Developer Awards

It’s been a massive year for Australian video games and their creators. So it’s no surprise this year’s annual Australian Game Developer Awards was hotly contested.

We’ve written before about how Queensland-made games were having a stellar year in particular, and it’s no surprise that multiple Queensland studios took home the biggest awards. The annual Game of the Year award was given to Unpacking, the zen-like adventure about moving homes.

Webbed, the adorable platformer about a spider trying to save her boyfriend from an evil bird, won the award for Excellence in Gameplay. Gameloft Brisbane also took home a win for their work on The Oregon Trail, which launched on Apple Arcade earlier this year.

Other states were well represented, though. Studio of the Year went to Black Lab Games, makers of the deeply authentic Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, one of the few genuinely good Battlestar Galactica video games. The Artful Escape‘s psychedelic visuals took out Excellence in Audio and Excellence in Art, making it the only title this year to win two awards.

On the individual front, Wargaming Sydney’s Ashley Van Wyngaard and Joy Everafter Stories’ Kathleen Smart jointly won the Rising Star Award. Wargaming Sydney general manager Steve Wang won the year’s Adam Lancman Award for his contributions to local video game development.

Here’s the full list of winners:

• Game of the Year: Unpacking (Witch Beam)
• Studio of the Year: Black Lab Games
• Excellence in Art: The Artful Escape (Beethoven & Dinosaur)
• Excellence in Gameplay: Webbed (Sbug Games)
• Excellence in Narrative: The Forgotten City (Modern Storyteller)
• Excellence in Audio: The Artful Escape (Beethoven & Dinosaur)
• Excellence in Accessibility: Unpacking (Witch Beam)
• Excellence in Mobile Games: The Oregon Trail (Gameloft Brisbane)
• Excellence in Serious Games: Sharmila (Chaos Theory Games and the World Food Programme)
• Excellence in Ongoing Games: Pico Tanks (Panda Arcade)
• Excellence in Emerging Games: Video World (Things for Humans)
• The Adam Lancman Award: Steve Wang (Wargaming Sydney)
• The Raising the Bar Award: Chad Toprak (Freeplay Independent Games Festival)
• The Rising Star Award: Kathleen Smart (Joy Everafter Stories) & Ashley Van Wyngaard (Wargaming Sydney)

For more information on the winners, head to the official GCAP site. You can also check out the winners of last year’s ADGAs here.