Singapore Scores Big at Inaugural Asia Game Awards
As part of the Singapore Games Week and gamescom asia, the Asia Game Awards 2021 were presented in a live stream moderated by SGGA’s chairwoman Gwen Guo herself. The awards recognize the best work in Asia’s games scene. Not only were candidates from Southeast Asia nominated but also from Central Asia, South Asia, and East Asia.
Here at Virtual SEA, we are, of course, particularly pleased that the jury, consisting of renowned members of the game scene, has awarded prizes to studios from Southeast Asia.
The “Excellence in Narrative Design” award went to Troy Chin and his detective visual novel A Red Sky at Dawn. In addition to the comic artist’s visual style, the game is characterized above all by its exciting and varied narrative. Our Kenzie was able to confirm this in her review of the game. The best part is that A Red Sky at Dawn is available for free at itch.io. The following games were also nominated for this award: Kabaret by Persona Theory Games (Malaysia) and Opus: Echo of Starsong by SIGONO (Taiwan).
The award for the best “Gaming Content Creator” also went to Singapore. The winner is Winston Ng because, with Vanda Bay, he and his company Finute are creating a virtual version of the city of Singapore and holding a variety of interactive events in this virtual City of Lions. Vanda Bay is still in development; you can find out more about the project here.
The “Jury’s Honorable Mention” category shows other cool games from Southeast Asia, where three games from the region were honoured. The winners are the coop game At Your Service from Thailand, the platformer Jump Jerboa from Singapore, and the visual novel EDDA Cafe from Indonesia. The games mentioned here could not assert themselves in other categories, but in the jury’s opinion, their overall quality is so high that they should also be honoured.
Here are the other winners of the Asian Games Awards 2021: The prize for “Excellence in Audio” and “Excellence in Design” went to Opus: Echo of Starsong. The roguelike deck builder Gordian Quest was also nominated in this category. Find out more about this game from Singapore in our review.
The title for best “Visual Art” went to Behind The Frame: The Finest Scenery. This artistically extremely appealing game also deservedly received the award for “Overall Best Game”, for which The Signal State from Singapore was also nominated. Unfortunately, this original synthetic puzzler came out empty-handed this time.
The two esport prizes for the best “Esport Athlete” and “Gaming Event” went to Xian and M2, respectively.
We are pleased that another game award is moving the Asian game scene into the centre of attention with the Asia Game Awards. We are, of course, excited about the winners and candidates from Southeast Asia.
