Excellence in Design

• Voyager Project – Disaster Fish
• Mars Underground – Moloch Media
• New Ice York – magicdweedoo
• JUMPGRID – Ian MacLarty
• The Greatest Good – PlayReactive

Excellence in Visual Art

• Novena – Cecile Richard
• It Will Be Hard – Hien Pham
• سايبر تصوف (Cyber Tasawwuf) – Mohamed Chamas
• The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game – Grace Bruxner
• Necrobarista – Route 59

Excellence in Audio

• Ashi: Lake of Light – Nick Cellini
• New Ice York – magicdweedoo
• Skyward Journey – Dan Vogt
• Mars Underground – Moloch Media
• The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game – Grace Bruxner

Excellence in Narrative

• Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown – Tin Man Games
• The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game – Grace Bruxner
• Symposium of Grief – T-Dog eXtreme
• Mars Underground – Moloch Media
• It Will Be Hard – Hien Pham

Non-Digital Game Award

• Elon Musk’s Ipod Submarine – Steve Dee
• The Greatest Good – PlayReactive
• Hand of Fate: Ordeals – Rule & Make
• Edible Games Cookbook – Jenn Sandercock
• There’s Been A Murder – Tin Star Games

Micro-Game Award

• The Interlude – David Cribb & Elijah Cauley
• A Month to Look at the Moon – Lenny Magner
• Novena – Cecile Richard
• _________ (What Even Is That Thing) – Rowan Crawford, Ben Weatherall & Rich McBride
• I’m Shirtless In This One – Hien Pham

Honourable Mentions

• Noise Drawers – Maize Wallin
• Amberial Dreams – Cuauhtemoc Moreno
• Reflections – Fae Daunt
• Neuromuscle – AKQA
• Micro Trans Actions – Cardboard Queers
• Dollhouse – Olivia Haines

Cherie Davidson (VIC) is a game producer, programmer, digital artist and teacher. She’s worked on a variety of games such as BAFTA nominated Tearaway Unfolded, Intergalactic Space Princess, an adventure game for teenage girls, and Paperbark, a charming game about a wombat and a hot Australian summer. She has been listed in Develop’s 30 Under 30, nominated for DevelopHer and is a member of BAFTA Crew. Cherie has been involved in Freeplay since 2013, including chairing the awards in 2015 and 2018.

Ruqiyah Patel (ACT) is an independent narrative designer who explores innovative ideas in her interactive fiction such as if not us and Predicated Text. Besides her relentless games work, she is also a fierce advocate for maths and maths education. Ruqiyah was a speaker at Parallels: The Freeplay 2018 Showcase and is excited to be involved in the 2019 Freeplay Awards.

Erika Verkaaik (QLD) is a Brisbane based game designer. Known for creating trash games and exploratory digital spaces, they like to experiment and create small, weird things. They are extremely passionate about tiny, experimental games and run a blog on which they curate and analyse such games. They also organise a local game dev meetup called Squiggly River.

Alexander Ocias (NSW) creates videogames that explore the navigation of muted, intimate digital spaces while reflecting on themes of sexuality and morality. His internet-distributed work has been cited as an inspiration for a new era of videogame artists, redefining independent games beyond disposability. Other creative projects include hundreds of thousands of birds for film, an interactive video wall in a biomedical plant, and an avocado you can talk to.

David Wildgoose (NSW) has been writing about games for over 25 years. He is the ex-editor of Kotaku, PC PowerPlay, and HYPER.

Aaron Lim (VIC) is a designer of tabletop games and part of the team running Incubator Melbourne, a regular tabletop playtesting event in Melbourne.

Zander Hulme (QLD) is a game audio designer and founder of Supertonic, a game audio company that puts together teams to deliver bespoke music, sound, and implementation for indie games. Zander is an advocate for good audio in games, helping run the Game Audio Brisbane meet-up group, as well as giving talks at various conferences and writing instructional articles to help educate budding sound designers.

Sofie Mather (WA) juggles a few goodtime-Perth videogame focused events including Playup Perth and enthusiastically fosters creative communities. She has a varied background in theatre, production, events and community management. Her most favourite thing to do at the moment is to coordinate wacky-super-rad events for Potluck Collective and enjoy the unique contributions it blossoms. Sofie always appreciates time with her plants.

Allison Walker (VIC) is a freelance game audio designer with a love for ambient music and birds that make great noises.