The winners of the 2005 Australian Game Developers Awards were recently presented at the Australian Game Developers Conference in Melbourne, and the full list of winners has now been made available on the official AGDC website. The awards are given to the top game developers and publishers based in Australia.
Best Game of 2005 went to Heroes of the Pacific, by IR Gurus. The WWII flight sim for PS2, Xbox, and PC also took Best PC Game, though Best Console Game went to Pandemic Studios Australia for Destroy All Humans!, which was picked up for a TV deal earlier this year. Sidhe Interactive won Best Handheld Game for GripShift, and Best Mobile Phone Game went to Firemint for Star Trek - The Cold Enemy.
Firemint also took home the prize for Best New Start-Up, among other awards which included Best Original Character Design (Krome Studios' Ty the Tasmanian Tiger), Best Game Audio (Pandemic's Destroy All Humans!, which featured remixed versions of classic horror movie themes), Best Game Design (Sidhe's Andy Satterthwaite for GripShift), Best Level Design (GripShift again), Award for Programming Excellence (David Jewsbury of IR Gurus), and Award for Outstanding Visual Arts (Clive Hambly, also of IR Gurus).
More general awards went to Steve Stamatiadis of Krome Studios, for Career Achievement; BigWorld Pty Ltd for Outstanding Innovation, and Sidhe Interactive, for Outstanding Industry Contribution. On the smaller end of the scale was the Unsigned Games Awards for independent talent.
In this independent-minded section of the awards, Gridwerx won Best Unsigned Game (Professional) for Gridwerx Genesis, with Metia Interactive as the runner-up with Cube Best Unsigned Game (Indie) went to AIE Melbourne's Aporkalypse, with ChickenHead Studios' Battlecore as the runner-up.
