IGF 2014 Student Showcase winners announced

The Independent Game Festival has announced the eight winners of the 16th annual Student Showcase, celebrating the most innovative student games from around the world this year. It's a stiff competition. The judges—other independent developers, mainstream developers, academics, and journalists—played nearly 350 entries.

They chose (in no particular order):

Museum of Simulation Technology by Albert Shih - Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center, which we were impressed with as well .

Engare by Mahdi Bahrami & Moslem Rasouli - NHTV University of Applied Science, a puzzle game which you can find here .

Risk of Rain by Hopoo Games - University of Washington, which you can already buy on Steam .

Symmetrain by Philipp Beau and Daniel Goffin - University of Amsterdam / University Kassel. the only game in the group that's not on PC, but you can get it for iOS .

Westerado by Ostrich Banditos - HKU, which you can play on Adult Swim .

Rhythm Doctor by Hafiz Azman and Winston Lee - University of Cambridge, a rhythm game which you can find a demo of here .

Foiled by Unblanched Peanuts - NYU, a fighting game with shades of Samurai Gunn , which you can find here .

Cyber Heist by Hack n' Hide - University of Utah. This looks really cool. It's a cooperative game in which one player moves through a level in a first-person point of view, and the other helps him by hacking obstacles from what looks like a 2D, puzzle game perspective. Unfortunately, no demo for this one.

Honorable mentions include Ladylike , Rabbit Rush , Flying Fish , and Bokida .

All the Student Showcase winners will be playable at the GDC 2014 show floor starting March 17. Each team will receive a prize of $1,000, all-access passes to the show, and are also in the running for an additional $2,000 prize for Best Student Game, to be revealed at the IGF Awards on March 19.