LogInCurators have selected the best games from 25 different countries and will feature a massive selection of prizes from a returning sponsor Xsolla.
Brazil’s Independent Games (BIG) Festival, the largest independent games festival in Latin America that takes place May 3 to May 9, 2021, is thrilled to reveal the finalists for this year’s event as well as announce an additional sponsorship deal with Xsolla, a marketing and monetization services tool for developers and distributors. With 510 entries from more than 50 countries and a record number of subscribers, BIG Festival 2021 is shaping up to be the largest ever, and Xsolla is upping the ante even further with a whopping $10,000 USD prize to the winner of the "Best Game: Xsolla's Choice" category!
The finalists list year hail from all over the world, with 29 of the 96 nominees representing the local scene in Brazil — a new record for the event and a sign of the explosive growth currently happening in the Brazilian game development industry. Categories for this year’s event include the customary standards, like Best Art, Best Audio, and Best Narrative, but also cover important and often overlooked brackets like BIG Impact: Educational and BIG Impact: Social Matters. These categories recognize important and underappreciated themes like race, sexual identity, abusive relationships, and environmental challenges.
“This year we had the largest number of subscribers to the Festival in the history of BIG. There were 510 games from more than 50 countries, but unfortunately, we were unable to reward everyone. Our curatorial team, after extensive and thorough evaluation, selected the 96 best games as finalists ”, says Gustavo Steinberg, director of BIG Festival.
Check out some of the awesome finalists for Best Game below:
- A Short Hike (Canada)
- Curious Expedition 2 (Germany)
- Figment 2: Creed Valley (Denmark)
- Genesis Noir (USA)
- Interrogation: You Will Be Deceived (Romania)
- Liberated (Poland)
- Not for Broadcast (United Kingdom)
- Pathologic 2 (Russia)
- Per Aspera (Argentina)
- The Signifier: Director's Cut (Chile)
Best Brazilian Game finalists include:
- Cartomante (Garoa Studios)
- Dandy Ace (Mad Mimic)
- Enso (Universidade Feevale)
- Fobia - St Dinfna Hotel (Pulsatrix Studios)
- Hero Among Us (Fire Horse Studio)
- Kaze and the Wild Masks (PixelHive)
- Red Ronin (Wired Dreams Studio)
- Retro Machina (Orbit Studio)
- Slash Quest (Big Green Pillow and Mother Gaia)
- Truth and Tales (Explot)
The Signifier: Director's Cut (Chile) is the most nominated game of the year, with five nominations (Innovation, Best Art, Best Narrative, Best LATAM Game, and Best Game), followed by Pathologic 2 (Russia) with four nominations (Best Sound, Best Gameplay, Best Narrative, and Best Game), and Genesis Noir (USA) also with four nominations (Innovation, Best Art, Best Sound, and Best Game).
BIG Festival is also extremely excited to welcome returning partner Xsolla, who will be providing a bevy of prizes and cash incentives to the finalists. Not only is the company putting up a huge $10,000 grand prize for the winner of "Best Game: Xsolla's Choice", but they’ll also be providing $500 to every finalist! Other offerings from Xsolla include a complimentary six-month subscription for Xsolla RFP service, free usage of Xsolla Login and Xsolla Launcher products for the periods of Friends & Family and Alpha-test, free custom design mock-ups for Xsolla Launcher, Xsolla Login, landing pages, and game forum built on the Xsolla Site Builder, and much more. All this adds up to a stellar $115,000+ in cash and prizes for the winners!
The Awards Ceremony takes place on Thursday, May 6, 2021, at 9:30 PM Brazil Time / 8:30 PM EDT and players will be able to follow everything online and for free. In addition to the awards ceremony itself, the entire event will also be broadcast online and free of charge — with the exception of business roundtables.
To see the complete list of categories and their respective nominees, visit the Awards website.
Register to attend BIG Festival 2021 by visiting the official website, here.
Follow BIG Festival on LinkedIn, and keep current with BIG Festival 2021 by following the event
on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and subscribe to the BIG Festival YouTube channel.
A press kit can be found here.
About the BIG Festival
BIG Festival, which received more than 20,000 visitors in 2019, is the largest and most important game festival in Latin America. Since 2012, the event has become a central meeting point for studios to attend lectures and workshops, network, and meet with industry peers to learn more about the business of gaming. BIG has helped hundreds of innovative games from all over the world connect with an international audience. Networking opportunities held at the event generated more than 4,000 meetings between 630 game industry professionals from 34 countries. In light of complications as a result of the global pandemic, BIG Festival transitioned to an online-only event, BIG Digital. The Festival still managed to draw record numbers, with more than 22,000 viewers tuning in to the event online. The digital version of BIG Festival generated 3,876 business meetings between more than 333 publishers, developers, and investors from a stunning 38 countries. These vital interactions led to an estimated $7 million in business deals!
About the Games Industry in Brazil
Brazil is now the 13th largest video game market in the world and second in Latin America, only to Mexico. The $1.6 billion (USD) Brazilian games industry has nearly doubled in size since 2014, and the number of local gamers reached 81.2 million as of 2019, making Brazil the fourth-largest consumer market in the world. Half of both men and women in Brazil play mobile games, while roughly 40 percent of men and women play PC games, according to Newzoo. Purchase intent is healthy as well, as 83 percent of gamers in the region have made an in-game purchase within the past six months.