Published on 8 May, 2021 Videogame awards are good for three things: they encourage people to continue creating new work; they direct attention towards particular pebbles among the otherwise amorphous landslide of new game releases; and they give bystanders like me something of mercifully little consequence to gripe about when nominations don't align with our personal tastes. I'm sad to report that the Independent Games Festival has delivered only two out of three in 2021. The nominations for this year's IGF Awards were announced yesterday, but they have left me little to gripe about. Sure, there's some changes I'd make, but there's no glaring omissions in my eyes. The panel of jurists have correctly identified that Teardown was one of the best games released last year, for example, and so it is nominated for both the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence In Design. The Grand Prize nominees also include Paradise Killer, Umurangi Generation, and Spiritfarer.