Keep Driving wins Grand Prize at the DevGAMM Awards

Keep Driving, a pixel-art management RPG about going on a road trip to a music festival, took home the Grand Prize at the DevGAMM Awards on Friday night.

The Swedish studio behind the title – YCJY Games – was awarded a cheque for $20,000 at the competition, which featured a total prize pool of $135,000, and which is open to indie developers and small studios. A total of 15 games took home awards on the night, including Despelote by Julian Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena (which won Excellence in Narrative), Promise Mascot Agency from Kaizen Game Works (Epic Games Store Indie Spotlight), and Rockbeasts by Lichthund (Excellence in Audio).

Glasshouse from FLAT28 Collective won the Developers Choice award, while Misery from Platypus Entertainment x Ytopia won the Community Vote. A total of 63 nominees featured in the show, which were selected from a pool of 610 entries.

The awards followed the two-day DevGAMM Lisbon conference, which this year was attended by 1,122 people. The conference began with a talk from Chris Charla, general manager of portfolio and programs at Xbox, who listed seven common mistakes made by developers when launching a game. More than 60 speakers gave talks and workshops across the two days, including Raphaël Joffres, audio lead for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive, and 80 games were demoed as part of the event’s showcase.

The biggest proportion of DevGAMM Lisbon attendees were from Portugal (44%), while 7% were from the UK, 5% were from Poland, and 5% from Spain. Around 33% of the attendees were women.

This year, DevGAMM Lisbon was preceded by the inaugural Madeira Games Summit on November 3 and 4, a much smaller event aimed at games industry leaders. GamesIndustry.biz features editor Lewis Packwood hosted fireside chats with Ustwo Games CEO Maria Sayans, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen, and FunPlus CBO Chris Petrovic, and the summit also featured talks and workshops from Henrique Olifiers (CEO of Bossa Studios), Alex Nichiporchik (CEO of TinyBuild), and Tim Browne (co-founder of Bright Gambit), among others.

Below is the full list of winners from last week’s DevGAMM Awards, in alphabetical order:

• Battle Cars: Nitro PvP Shooter (TinyBytes) – Game Changer Award by Aptoide
• Breathedge 2 (RedRuins Softworks) – Most Anticipated Game
• Crowded – A Crow Citybuilder (Nestwork Games) – Best System & Strategy Indie Game by Astra Logical
• DDoD (The Future Entertainment Company) – Best Indie Game by TinyBuild
• Despelote (Julian Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena) – Excellence in Narrative
• Drop Duchy (Sleepy Mill Studio) – Excellence in Game Design
• Glasshouse (FLAT28 Collective) – Developers Choice
• Hell Maiden (AstralShift) – Best Game from Portugal
• Keep Driving (YCJY games) – Grand Prize
• Misery (Platypus Entertainment x Ytopia) – Community Vote
• Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) – Epic Games Store Indie Spotlight
• Rockbeasts (Lichthund) – Excellence in Audio
• Stretchmancer (Triangle Wave) – Best Innovation
• Tukoni: Forest Keepers (Dream Operator) – Excellence in Visual Art
• What the Clash? (Triband) – Best Mobile Game

Disclosure: GamesIndustry.biz’s travel and accommodation for the event was paid for by DevGAMM.