There are a lot of awards being handed out this week, in addition to tomorrow's announcement of the results from our 2nd Flash game design competition(!)

The Game Developers Conference is in full swing out in San Francisco this week and the results of the Independent Games Festival (IGF) and Game Developers Choice Awards have been announced, and there are a couple of familiar faces that we need to give a nod to.

Winner of the IGF's top honor, the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, went to Bit Blot's Aquaria, a 2D underwater adventure game that hasn't even been released yet. Congratulations to Bit Blot, which is comprised of only two people, Alec Holowka and Derek Yu (of TIGSource). I can't wait to play this game(!)

Also from the IGF, Samorost 2 took home the highly praised and coveted (at least around here) Best Web Game prize. This amazing and wonderful, surreal point-and-click adventure, created by Jakub Dvorský of Amanita Design, has been available since December, 2005, and yet it's great to see this piece of work win an IGF prize. If you haven't yet played Samorost or Samorost 2, you really owe it to yourself to experience them both, post-haste.

And the Game Developers Choice Awards don't usually acknowledge any Flash or Web-based games since everyone knows that PC and console games are the only 'real' games that deserve any attention. Still, Boštjan Cadež's infectious Line Rider, the game that fired up the Web last September, joined the ranks of revered console titles, Nintendo's Wii Sports and Capcom Entertainment's Okami, with all three taking home an Award for Innovation. Congratulations Boštjan, we are very pleased to see you earn the recognition you deserve for creating such an inspiring piece of work (that was likely played by more people than both those other two titles combined.)

Congratulations to all of these independent game developers! And join us tomorrow when we give out our own awards for the latest Flash game design competition!