Australian Game Developer Awards 2023 winners revealed

Posted on October 5, 2023

It was a night of glitz, glam and video games as the Australian Game Developer Awards 2023 took place as part of Melbourne International Games Week last night, which Checkpoint Gaming was in attendance for.

The major nod went to Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical, which took out Game of the Year along with the awards for Accessibility and Music. We said in our review that the game from Summerfall Studios was “A wonderfully peculiar blend of visual novel, choice-driven RPG, and off-Broadway musical, Stray Gods embraces the theatrical duality of comedy and tragedy and wraps it into a narrative experience that can be at once gut-wrenching and cheeky.”

“Stray Gods was a Herculean effort from all involved, and we are deeply grateful to receive this award, and to the Australian game development community for all the support over the years,” said Liam Esler, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Summerfall Studios. “We’re thrilled with the response to the game. Thank you to our publisher, Humble Games, as well as the judges for all their work, and congratulations to all of the winners tonight!”

Some of the other big winners include the chaotic and fun Moving Out 2 for Excellence in Gameplay, the utterly gorgeous The Master’s Pupil for Excellence in Art and the delightfully written Amarantus for Excellence in Narrative. Additionally, Earthlingo, the language-learning game with a twist that won for Excellence in Impactful games, announced that the game would be made available for free for schools to help young folk with their education. Awesome.

Check out the full winners list below.

Excellence in ART

Excellence in GAMEPLAY

Excellence in NARRATIVE

Excellence in SOUND DESIGN

Excellence in MUSIC

Excellence in TECHNICAL DESIGN

Excellence in ACCESSIBILITY

Excellence in EMERGING GAMES

Excellence in IMPACTFUL GAMES

Excellence in MOBILE GAMES

Excellence in AR/VR Games

Excellence in ONGOING Games

GAME OF THE YEAR

Studio of the year: PlaySide Studios
Adam Lancman Award: Trent Kusters, Director and Co-Founder of League of Geeks
The Empower Award: Dylan Bennett and Caitlin Lomax
Rising Star Award: Ryan Penning (creator of Waypoint)
Congratulations to all the winners at the Australian Game Developer Awards 2023, and all the deserving nominees in what has been another stellar year for Aussie video games!