The Nuovo Award or Innovation Award is an award given at the Independent Games Festival (IGF), an annual event that takes place during the Game Developers Conference, one of the largest gatherings of the indie video game industry. The award is given to honor "abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games". The award was designed as a way for art games to compete with traditional indie games, and the winner was originally selected from a group of finalists and given a prize of US$2,500. In 2011, the IGF increased the prize money to US$5,000 due to the increased quality of the entries.

The former IGF chairman Brandon Boyer described the Nuovo finalists as experimental games that attempted to distinguish themselves from established conventions, and would not fit in any of the other IGF award categories. Nominations for the award are made by the IGF's judges. Eight finalists are chosen by an elected jury from among the nominees and a few others are given honorable mentions if they receive insufficient votes to become finalists. The winner is decided from among the finalists by jury voting. Jury members include notable game developers and previous winners and finalists, including individuals such as Jennifer Schneidereit, Jason Rohrer, Paolo Pedercini, Ian Bogost, and Daniel Benmergui. In the seventeen years since the award's debut, 119 games have been nominated as finalists, while 97 games have been chosen as honorable mentions. Eighteen games have won the award, the first being the platformer Between (2009), while the latest to be awarded is Horses (2026).

Recipients

+ Year Winner Developer Finalists Honorable mentions 2009Between Coil Mightier The Graveyard You Have To Burn The Rope scope="row" style="font-size: 10pt;" 2010Tuning CactusA Slow Year Closure Enviro-Bear 2000 Today I Die scope="row" style="font-size: 10pt;" 2011NidhoggMesshof Bohm Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now The Cat and the Coup Dinner Date Hazard: The Journey Of Life A House In California Loop Raccord Amnesia: The Dark Descent Choice of Broadsides Faraway Feign Spy Party 2012Storyteller At a Distance Dear Esther Fingle GIRP Johann Sebastian Joust Proteus WAY Deep Sea Four Letter Word GlitchHiker Hundreds POP 2013Cart Life 7 Grand Steps Bientôt l’Été Dys4ia Little Inferno MirrorMoon Spaceteam VESPER.5 Frog Fractions Renga Starseed Pilgrim The Stanley Parable Thirty Flights of Loving 2014Luxuria SuperbiaTale of Tales Corrypt Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!" Extrasolar Papers, Please Perfect Woman Save the Date SoundSelf 18 Cadence Device 6 Elegy for a Dead World Shelter Superhot 2015Tetrageddon Games Become A Great Artist In Just 10 Seconds Bounden Desert Golfing Elegy for a Dead World How Do You Do It? Plug & Play Rooftop Cop Curtain Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration International Jetpack Conference Outer Wilds Phonopath Push Me Pull You 2016CibeleStar Maid Games Fantastic Contraption Her Story Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes Orchids to Dusk Panoramical Progress The Beginner's Guide Affordable Space Adventures Enough Future Unfolding Sage Solitaire Sentree TIS-100 Vignettes 2017Oiκοςpiel, Book I Islands: Non-Places Close Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor Everything Virginia Mu Cartographer Lieve Oma Memoir En Code: Reissue Far from Noise Ladykiller in a Bind Witchball Project Perfect Citizen Wheels of Aurelia Quadrilateral Cowboy 2018Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy Tarotica Voo Doo 10 Mississippi A Mortician's Tale Cosmic Top Secret Everything Is Going to Be OK Baba Is You Kids Where the Water Tastes Like Wine IO Interloper The Norwood Suite Cheap Golf Witchball Million Onion Hotel 2019Black Room Circle0 Do Not Feed The Monkeys eCheese Zone Mirror Drop Noita Nth Dimensional Hiking Paratopic All Our Asias Cyberpet Graveyard Hypnospace Outlaw Levedad Macdows 95 Nerve Damage Subserial Network The Norwood Suite 2020The Space BetweenChristoph Frey Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1 Infini Life Tastes Like Cardboard Promesa Song of Bloom The Longing Pagan: Autogeny Astrologaster Elsinore Fit for a King My Exercise Where the Bees Make Honey Smile For Me 2021BlaseballThe Game Band Nightmare Temptation Academy That Night, Steeped by Blood River Airplane Mode Welcome to Elk Umurangi Generation Chasing Light Kristallijn Cai Cai Balão Genesis Noir Gnosia Liquidators Night Dreams Rainy Season Stilstand There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension 2022Memory CardLily Zone Okthryssia and Saturnia's Bureaucratic Adventures Space Hole 2020 Tux and Fanny Cruelty Squad Sparkles & Gems Fuzz Dungeon Cuccchi Last Call The Shape of Time The Under Presents Song of Homunculus Card Shark The Vale: Shadow of the Crown 2023Betrayal at Club LowCosmo D Studios Afterglitch An Outcry He Fucked the Girl Out of Me Queer Man Peering Into a Rockpool.jpg Sylvie Lime Time Bandit Titanic II: Orchestra for Dying At Sea Atuel Ib Not For Broadcast Of Moons and Mania RPG Time: The Legend of Wright 2024Anthology of the Killerthecatamites, Tommy Tone, A. Degen 1000xRESIST Cryptmaster Kevin (1997-2077) Mediterranea Inferno Nidus The Forest Cathedral BlueSuburbia goodbye.monster In Stars and Time Nour: Play with Your Food The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood 2025Consume MeJenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder Despelote Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity Ginger Individualism in the Dead-Internet Age: an Anti-Big Tech Asset Flip Shovelware Manifesto Starship Home Tapeçaria The Exit 8 Arctic Eggs Judero Onto Maizilind Unto Infinity Price of Flight Project_Y: Working Title Refind Self: The Personality Test Game2026HorsesAndrea Lucco Borlera Baby Steps Blippo+ Mini Mini Golf Golf Plum Road Tea Dream Titanium Court kevin’s PLAYING in berlin Wednesdays The End of Gameplay No Players Online The House Dreams Along With Them Type Help _ΩMEGA_POINT Dreamcore Threshold

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