Nordic Game Awards

Nordic Game Awards 18 winners announced

Little Nightmares, ECHO and others feature in this year’s prize list.

Nordic Game Awards

Nordic Game Conference, held in Malmö, Sweden, is one of Europe’s biggest game developer conferences, and one of the highlights of the event is the award ceremony. This year’s ceremony saw some well-known games adding yet more silverware to their trophy cabinets, as well as throwing in a few surprises for indie fans.

One of the big winners was popular horror platformer Little Nightmares from Tarsier Studios, who are based just down the road from Slagthuset, the venue for the conference. Little Nightmares won Best Audio as well as Best Art, and was also nominated for Best Game Design and Game of the Year. One member of the jury commented that: “The world has a cinematic quality while feeling disturbingly real. Horror is transformed into beauty.”

The stand-out winner of the night, however, was ECHO, from Danish studio Ultra Ultra. A sci-fi action adventure known for its super-intelligent AI which learns the player’s tactics to use against them, by creating ‘echoes’ (AI simulations of the player) which you must fight against. ECHO received three awards: Best Game Design, Best Debut Game, and the top prize of Game of the Year. The jury’s verdict was:

“Clever game design, elegant visuals and a cold, unnerving atmosphere. Every single aspect of this game comes together to form a thoroughly impressive whole, unlike anything we’ve ever played.”

ECHO is currently on a 50% reduction, so head over to Steam to grab it before the offer ends. Other winners of the night included SteamWorld Dig 2 (Game of the year – Small Screen) and sport VR game Sparc.