Eliminate, Glyder 2, Ovi Maps Racing in the running for IMGA glory

The IMGA – international mobile gaming awards - is an annual competition that showcases particularly innovative or excellent mobile games. Past winners include EDGE, Real Racing, and Zen Bound.

A panel of judges recently convened around a big table in Marseille to choose the nominees for this year's awards, hacking through around 150 entries to arrive at a shortlist of just 25, spread equally across five categories.

There were two themes to this year's judging. The first is that the proportion of iPhone entries is predictably much higher than last year, up from 16 per cent to 60 per cent. The second is that zombies have apparently replaced monkeys as the platform's stock comedy sprite.

Next year, the hope is that zombie monkeys will make an appearance.

Here's what a few of the judges had to say about the line up.

Lars Andersen, project manager, Nordic Game
"I was very impressed to see the games in this years competition and it was very hard to choose among them. High quality games and lots of innovation. I'm very pleased to see more and more real world games entering the IMGA."

Alexander Ekvall, co-founder, Fabrication Games
"The most prominent line-up of nominees so far with a lot of great games not making it to the top 25. Great to see that heavy hitters like Konami, with two nominees, are taking mobile games seriously and making quality stuff. But also great to see the quality and polish that is coming from smaller studios and China."

Saoud Moco, marketing delivery manager, ARM
"It was encouraging to see that not all mobile games revolve around the iPhone. I was also glad to see a lot of entries coming from China and India, two of the largest booming economies and a massive audience for portable devices. The future looks promising.

"The categories of games has also made an impression on me. At first, when thinking of location based content, I wondered how a GPS based game could evolve, but the innovative ways it has been applied in this competition impressed me enough that I want to play some of them."

Pekka Kupiainen, producer, Nokia Ovi Studio
“It was great to see all that variety of games. It became really obvious during the course of the day that innovation and ideas are what really matter. Of course, the design has to be also well executed but without unique idea it’s very hard to stand out from the crowd. ”

Thomas Richter, guru, formerly of Fox Mobile
“The overall quality of entries has improved. There was a large pool of really good games to chose from. Especially graphics design, storyline and quality of marketing assets have improved tremendously. The "touchscreen-playing Knight" that we all laughed about stands out. Also, a couple of really innovative UI-concepts was offered ... the Frog among others.”

Mr Richter also had some criticism of the field, which might serve as a cautionary note to developers considering entering the competition next year.

“Unfortunately, the iPhone hype seems to have prompted countless developers to copy every game in the world again and again. Just because it's iPhone doesn't make it good... no more Diner Dash variations, please.”

Here are the nominees in full. The winners from these five categories will be announced on the 15th February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Excellence in design
Castle Warriors, GameResort, USA
Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard, Press Start Studio, France
Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior, Digital Legends, Spain and India Games, India
Mike V: Do or Die - Skateboarding, Ratrod Studio, Canada
Ancient Frog Jr., James Brown, New Zealand

Excellence in connectivity
Iplay, Fabrication Games, Sweden
Krazy Kart Racing, Konami, Germany
Sniper Vs. Sniper, Com2uS, USA
Eliminate Pro, ngmoco USA
Age of Heroes Online, NOMOC Publishing., Ukraine

Excellence in gameplay
MiniSquadron, Tak Fung, UK
Homerun Battle 3D, Com2uS, USA
Inotia 2: A Wanderer of Luone, Com2uS, USA
Ovi Maps Racing, Nokia, Finland
Glyder 2, Glu Mobile, USA

Best real world game
Mister X Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Germany
Dark Orbit Ground Forces (as a game on GPS Mission Pro), Orbster, Germany
Ghost Patrol (as a game on GPS Mission Pro), Orbster, Germany
Ulrike and Eamon, Blast Theory, United Kingdom
Gbanga Santa, Gbanga by Millform, Switzerland

Best casual game award
Labyrinth 2, Illusion Labs, Sweden
Angry Birds, Rovio, Finland
3D Rollercoaster Rush, Digital Chocolate, USA
I'm Destroyer, Colorme (Beijing) Info Tech Co. China
Wire Way, Konami, Germany

Visit the IMGA website for more details.