Lazy 8 Studios' puzzle game Cogs and Team 3's platformer Gear have each respectively won $100,000 in the professional and non-professional categories for GameStop's inaugural Indie Game Challenge.
Lazy 8's Cogs is a 3D puzzler in which players build machines from sliding tiles. The game is also a finalist in the Gamasutra-affiliated Independent Games Festival 2010 in the Excellence in Design category.
Lazy 8 was founded in 2008 by Rob Jagnow, whose experience includes working on flight simulators in Switzerland and Japan. Prior to starting his own company, he worked on projects with Demiurge Studios, Gearbox, Kaos, EA and WXP. Brendan Mauro was lead artist on Cogs, a PC-original game that recently released on iPhone. Cogs also won the Indie Game Challenge's art and gameplay categories.
The non-professional winner, Gear, comes from Team 3 of DigiPen Institute of Technology. Team members include Joshua Maiche, Mike Halbrook, Ben Frazier, Brian Lee, and Andrew Hill. Gear, a 2D platformer that involves controlling a robot with the ability to change his hand into a gear, also earned an honorable mention in IGF 2010.
In addition, Erik Measure and Karl Sabo of Nimbly Games walked away with the technical achievement and gamer's choice awards for their "aerial brawler" Altitude.
Indie Game Challenge is also run by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University.
