The winners of the Freeplay Awards 2024 have been revealed overnight, in a cosy ceremony celebrating independent games from Australia and New Zealand. As in previous years, the nominees and winners were all crowned based on their innovation and ingenuity.
Amongst the nominees were games produced in the last three years, with the Freeplay Awards covering titles released between April 2021 and late 2023. Per Creatrix Tiara, Freeplay’s Awards Lead, there were an unexpected amount of entrants for this year’s Freeplay Awards, with people “from all sorts of backgrounds in games” nominating their projects.
The list of initial nominees was wonderful – beyond established studios, there were welcome nods for a number of smaller, lesser known creators and games, including a work created by a father and young son duo.
Read: Freeplay’s mission to build a sustainable games festival – Interview
As for the eventual winners, there were a number of deserving games celebrated during the event – including Wayward Strand, Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg, Heavenly Bodies, Unpacking, and more.
Here’s the full list of winners from the Freeplay Awards 2024.
Freeplay Awards 2024: Winners
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
- Bell’s Beach (Ground Bird)
- Fight with Spirit (Storybrewers Roleplaying)
- Princess Die (Tin Star Games)
- Voltage Vendors (Zero Sleep Studios)
- Squishy Taylor and the City-Wide Ghost Plague (The Inhabitors)
- The Telwynium: Book 1 – Winter’s Dawn (Dave Lloyd)
- Fantasy Town Regional Manager (Caps Collective)
- stand up (Rae White)
- Pants Quest (Georgia Patton)
- Dros (emergeWorlds)
- Foundlings (Caradoc Games)
ACROSS THE DITCH
- Arcane Crimes Division (Imaginary Empire)
- Idyll (Demi Schänzel) – [WINNER]
- Seedlings (Bardsley Creative)
DESIGN
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
- Spin Rhythm XD (Super Spin Digital)
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive) – [WINNER]
- KILLBUG (Samurai Punk)
VISUAL ART
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
- You Will (Not) Remain (Bad Eldritches)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games) – [WINNER]
AUDIO
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive) – [WINNER]
- Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Summerfall Studios)
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern)
- You Will (Not) Remain (Bad Eldritches)
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
NARRATIVE
- Wayward Strand (ghost pattern) – [WINNER]
- Unpacking (Witch Beam Games)
- Trail of the Wretched (Xavier Bell, Jason Reagen, Khoa Ho)
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
- Amarantus (ub4q)
- Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Brent Arnold)
NON-DIGITAL
- Owlbear Omelette (Caradoc Games)
- Rainbow Paths (Helen Kwok & Chad Toprak)
- Mesozoic Mayhem (Craig Somerton)
- TRADE (Barking Spider Creative)
- Fragged Empire 2 (Wade Dyer)
- The Score (Tin Star Games) – [WINNER]
MICRO-GAME
- The Search for the Golden Crown Plant (Tom and Dad Games)
- Seethe and Scab (Max Myers)
- Bin Chicken Has A Go! (T-Dog eXtreme) – [WINNER]
- In Search of Lost Scroll (Vidya Rajan)
- Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Sure! (Toot Games)
- Sometimes (Elliot Cox)
EXPERIMENTAL
- Grasping (Duncan Corrigan) – [WINNER]
- THE SOUL OF TOO BIRDS (Nonsense Machine)
- In Search of Lost Scroll (Vidya Rajan)
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost)
- The Hotline (Kasey Gambling)
- Quite Contrary (Helen Kwok & Chad Toprak)
EMERGING DEVELOPERS
- Dial In (Julian Lia)
- Florrae (Perlinators)
- Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Brent Arnold)
- You Will (Not) Remain (Bad Eldritches) – [WINNER]
- In Search of Lost Scroll (Vidya Rajan)
- Dap (Melting Parrot)
WILDCARD AWARD
- Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Brent Arnold) – [WINNER]
FREEPLAY AWARD
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg (Fuzzy Ghost) – [WINNER]
We congratulate all the winners and nominees in each category of the Freeplay Awards.
