Nominated for:

The Guest Plate

Roadtrip across the country. Confront a tyrant. The revolution will be messy—but the relationships will be messier.

PC, Mac | Visual Novel

Nominated for:

The Perfect Recipe: Excellence in Design
The Composed Segment: Excellence in Audio

Create sweet tunes out of animal sounds!
Ever heard a tūī, an elephant seal, and a cicada making music together? No-one has... until now!
Create the wildest super-group imaginable and save your tracks to the in-game library.

Browser | Sandbox / musical toy

Nominated for:

The Student’s Slice

PC | Couch-play Hack'n'Slash RPG

Nominated for:

The Guest Plate

You are Daisy — spunky, ambitious, and totally fed up with your town's local cult and their "deity": a giant sunflower. Under the gaze of your powerful father, a gang of anarchists send you on a secret mission with an unspeakable objective... to exterminate the Godflower.

Gameboy, Browser | Adventure RPG

Nominated for:

The Student’s Slice

Color Climb is a multiplayer platformer game where the map is ever-switching between two states - a challenging game to play with friends and family that'll be sure to be fun!

PC | Multiplayer 2D Platformer

Nominated for:

The ‘Slice of Heaven’ Grand Prize
The Perfect Recipe: Excellence in Design
The Composed Segment: Excellence in Audio
The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art
The Accessible Ambrosia: Excellence in Accessibility

DREDGE is a single-player fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent. Sell your catch, upgrade your boat, and dredge the depths for long-buried secrets. Explore a mysterious archipelago and discover why some things are best left forgotten.

PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 / 5, Xbox One / S / X | Adventure, Lovecraftian, Fishing, Mystery

Nominated for:

The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art
The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation

Epicool Kai Karting features our favourite characters from the Vloggingtons in a crazy parkour food fight to see who can get the most likes!
Play on your own or with a mate, as each character flings, flies, flails and fails their way to victory against everyone else!

Browser | Action

Nominated for:

The Student’s Slice

Join a long lineage of Hunters as you run and gun through the wild west in this action rogue-like. Take on Bounties, Unlock powerful weapons and come face-to-face with a gallery of terrifying monsters.

PC, Steam Deck | Action Roguelite

Nominated for:

The Guest Plate

Gubbins is a friendly puzzle game where players place tiles to construct words, with the help and hindrance of wildcard modifiers called Gubbins.
Minimalist typography alongside kooky cartoons serve as a canvas for moreish wordplay. Dig through the draw pile and make words on the board with hilarious friends wreaking havoc.

iPhone / iPad now and Android, PC, Nintendo Switch in future | Word / Puzzle

Nominated for:

The Perfect Recipe: Excellence in Design

Somewhere out on the oceans of the internet, an island resides.
Best enjoyed after a long day away, Idyll is a small social world designed around kinder forms of online conversation and connection. Wander around a gentle pastoral island, strike up small conversations with other passing players, and even toss out small letters into the wide open blue oceans of the internet.

PC | Social space, Zone

Nominated for:

The Accessible Ambrosia: Excellence in Accessibility
The Tactile Taste: Excellence in Physical Games

According to official records, Carmine is a dusty, distant, unremarkable planet with no recorded human habitation. It is merely another speck on the canvas of the infinite void of space. But those who know what Carmine truly is would tell you a different story.

Tabletop Roleplaying Game

Nominated for:

The Guest Plate

Kinder World is an emotional wellbeing app designed to help users build resilience and explore their own emotions. Take care of virtual houseplants in a judgment-free environment by completing scientifically-backed wellbeing activities for just a few minutes at a time, twice a day.

iPhone / iPad, Android | Wellbeing

Nominated for:

The Perfect Recipe: Excellence in Design
The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art

Little Robo Climber is a 2D action arcade platformer. You'll ascend the procedurally generated ship avoiding traps and enemies. No checkpoints or bosses. Just climb to the top... Oh and look out for the fire.

PC, Mac | Action Platformer

Nominated for:

The Perfect Recipe: Excellence in Design
The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art

Blend into the crowd, and take out the other. Trust no one.
Local multiplayer with a friend on the same keyboard.

PC, Mac, Browser | Multiplayer Action Stealth

Nominated for:

The ‘Slice of Heaven’ Grand Prize, The Tactile Taste: Excellence in Physical Games

Ovation is an engine building game in which you become one of the greatest classical composers of all time!
In Ovation, 1 to 4 players become real Western European composers from the late 18th and early 19th century competing to achieve the greatest legacy. As you gain experience, the single action you take each turn becomes more and more effective, helping you to build your legacy, allowing you to perform even greater pieces of music, and leading you to become a Maestro.

Tabletop game

Nominated for:

The Accessible Ambrosia: Excellence in Accessibility

Born as a fox in the forest of Korea, Miho carries with her the memory of a traveler who showed her kindness and spoke of home. Now more human than fox, Miho has spent a long, long time searching for her person. She arrives by airship to Wellington, one of the jewels of the floating island of New Zealand.

PC, Mac, Linux | Visual Novel / Romance

Nominated for:

The Student’s Slice

Pneuma is a first person action, roguelike game with creative mechanics and a unique art style. The player will have to fight their way through ‘dungeons’ using elemental attacks to make their way through to the next level.

PC | Shooter, Action

Nominated for:

The ‘Slice of Heaven’ Grand Prize
The Poetic Serving: Excellence in Narrative
The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art
The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation

A story-driven GameBoy game about an emo teen in 2007 with a HUGE gay crush on his best friend! Explore, puzzle-solve and button mash your way through gratuitous dialogue in this GameBoy adventure about awkward teens!

PC, Browser, Gameboy Color | Walking Simulator, Adventure, Narrative Game

Nominated for:

The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation

You are the silent driver of the SubVee. Your deep-sea vessel is discovered by rebel divers who guard a submerged base. They don’t trust you, or each other. You must uncover the secret alliances and fractures of this diverse crew before your SubVee fills with water. Conversation is a dangerous game. Don’t get too deep.

PC, Mac, iPhone/iPad, Android | Narrative Puzzle

Nominated for:

The Poetic Serving: Excellence in Narrative
The Student’s Slice

You have just transferred to the University of Otago.
The Bird of the Year Ball -- the biggest night of the year -- is in three days.
Who will you bring as a date?

PC | Dating simulator, Education

Nominated for:

The Composed Segment: Excellence in Audio
The Accessible Ambrosia: Excellence in Accessibility

“uiui” is a quiz game created for all ages to teach and test your Te Reo Māori vocabulary.

iPhone / iPad | Quiz

Nominated for:

The Composed Segment: Excellence in Audio

Restore glory to the Nine Realms as you fight in an endless Ragnarok! Join forces with the goddess Freya to recover sacred relics stolen by Loki and scattered across the realms in this epic incremental clicker game.

iPhone / iPad, Android | Idle Mobile RPG

Nominated for:

The Guest Plate

Wayward Strand is a heartfelt story told in a curious way. Hop aboard an airborne hospital and meet its fully-voiced cast of eclectic characters. As time passes for everyone on board, explore the interwoven lives of the patients and staff; discover something new on each and every playthrough.

PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 / 5, Xbox One / S / X | Narrative