Google has named the top 20 European Indie Game Contest finalists today after having started the contest last Fall. The finalists, which include games such as Lost In Harmony, PinOut, and Samorost 3, will continue on to compete against each other for the winning spot, with Google announcing the winner during their final event in London next month on February 16th. Google will hold the event at the Saatchi Gallery in the Chelsea district of London and announce the winners after holding public voting for all who attend and announcing the top 10.
Although the announcement for the winners is being held in the UK, the indie games that have made it to the final 20 as well as many others who submitted their games but didn’t make it to the finalist round, come from developers that are all over Europe, including the Czech Republic, Israel, France, Finland, Turkey, Sweden, and other countries. All of the top 20 finalists will receive a few prizes, including a Pixel XL smartphone, promotion for their game on a billboard in London, and two tickets to attend a Playtime event this year which Google notes is an “invite-only” event, though they don’t mention anything about timing specifics. While these are some great prizes, those who make it to the top 10, as well as the top 3, will end up getting quite a few more perks as they’ll also receive promotion of their game in the Indie Game Corner on Google Play, a YouTube Influencer campaign worth 50,000 Euros, and a Pixel C tablet in addition to what they get for being a top 20 finalist.
The Google Play Indie Games Contest for Europe marks the second contest that Google has held for indie games, as they held one for U.S.-based developers last year during the Summer, and later announcing the winners at the end of September. Narrowing things down to 20 finalists may sound like an easy task, but Google had to sift through more than 1,000 indie game submissions to pick the very best of the best, which likely required quite a bit of time, with some of that time probably dedicated to playing the games that were submitted.