The shortlist of the 2025 indiePlay China Independent Game Competition has been announced!

2025-10-20 21:55:28|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

The 2025 indiePlay China Independent Game Competition is entering its 11th year. 11 years ago, “indie games” was also a very trendy and niche concept among game developers."Independence" represents a spirit, a kind of continuous thinking and exploration in game development, the continuous pursuit of game play, narrative, design, and the continuous exploration of visual, auditory and other artistic expressions.

In 2015, out of encouragement and discovery of more outstanding ideas and developers, the first indiePlay China Independent Game Competition was born.Over the past 11 years, indiePlay has witnessed and accompanied the growth of independent games in China. The indiePlay China Independent Game Competition has become a very representative independent game event among independent game developers in China and even around the world, and has certain influence, reputation and appeal around the world.

By 2025, "independent game" developers in China are no longer isolated. The concept of independent games is not only known by game practitioners, but also by the majority of players.The indiePlay shortlisted area on WePlay is extremely popular every year. The indiePlay platform not only connects developers and players, but also serves as a bridge between domestic and foreign developers.As indiePlay's international reputation and influence continue to increase, registrations for indiePlay 2025 have exceeded developers from 30 countries or regions.

In addition to the continuous increase in the number of registered works and the number of overseas works, indiePlay has also witnessed and accompanied the improvement in the quality of Chinese independent game works year by year.More and more developers with professional game development backgrounds have either resigned from major companies to devote themselves full-time to the development of independent games after work, which has also made the independent game track more and more "volatile".

In the next decade, the concept of "independent games" may change with the changing times, but the spirit of exploration and pursuit of developing high-quality games represented behind it will not change.In the next ten years, indiePlay will continue to discover more outstanding ideas and developers through activities, encourage developers to innovate and explore games, and at the same time leverage its accumulated platform advantages to better connect developers with domestic and foreign industries, developers and players.

Before announcing the nominations for this year's awards, I would like to thank all the judges.The continuous development and growth of indiePlay is also inseparable from the serious and careful evaluation of each judge every year.This year's review also went through 2 months of online review and centralized offline review in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. After multiple rounds of repeated discussions, the shortlist for each award of the 2025 indiePlay China Independent Game Competition was finally determined!

The shortlist for each of the 2025 indiePlay awards is as follows (in no particular order):

Best Visual Effects Finalist

Rumbling town

gold star swirl

A Thousand Days of Plum Blossoms

giant eye

Soul Clinic: Reinvention

Night Garden Travel Notes

Best Design Finalist

I have a noble family now

good friend

Escape from Duck Cove

Inspiration of decay

winter frontline

Screws and floating cities

Best Innovation Finalist

Super Blade Warrior

word game world

AI2U: With you until the end of the world ~ My yandere cat girl AI girlfriend

CATO butter cat

Flying over Ikaria

ginger

Best Narrative Finalist

Showers all day long

Avatar Zero

Love and Robot Maintenance Technology

Hidden dreams intertwined

Confucian Temple full of snow

Strange Disease Detective

Finalist for best auditory effect

house cleaner

Rhythm Witch

Cohen 1939

Love Story Memories that don’t exist

No place found

Buddy the Bug

Best Game Jam Finalist

Who is the human machine?

Where's My Body?!

Cargo Spirit Story

Out of Sight

Live verification (aliveCHAPTCHA)

it moved

In fact, modeling is all alive

Daily necessities clinic

Small folder to retrieve lost files!

A box with character

The finalists for the Best Game Jam are selected from the works submitted at various offline sites and online participating activities of the 2025 CiGA Game Jam.

Best Rising Star Finalist Team

MadGoat Game Studio-Underworld Contract

Yahzj Games-Frontier Pathfinder

Destroyer Game-Devil Card

Prism Maze-Concord 01: New Life

Li Jing Studio-The Book of Smoke

Shanyu Studio-Nemesis

The Best Rising Star Award is based on teams, targeting teams that sign up to participate in the indiePlay competition for the first time and have exciting works on display.

Best Student Work Shortlisted Game

Cam Down

free will

Harvest Gambling

Who is Jack?

Oumaiga!

Minimalist tower defense

Multiple windows

Guns, Princesses and Heroes

Records of Mi Xuanxing

write it off

Forensic Wire

Lead Rain 2

The light tower of eternal night

Avatar Zero

Window No. 8: Millennium

The shortlist of the best student works includes 5 works selected through the CUSGA China College Student Game Development Competition and passed directly to the finalists of the indiePlay student group.Best Overseas Finalist Game

Falling: Metal Maid Salvation

MONOWAVE

looking for dummies

Constance

track echo

The Story of Ai

The journey of chess and war

Nervous Goose

Sleepless Land:Witches and Spells

Dawn Tribe

As indiePlay's international influence continues to increase, 2025 indiePlay overseas works have received applications from developers from more than 30 countries and regions, many of which have been released this year and are widely known around the world.

After discussions among the judges, in order to discover more outstanding works, the number of finalists for the best overseas works this year is still 10. At the same time, works that have been online and have exploded in sales at the time of registration will not be counted in the final review. Thank you to these overseas works for their participation and support in indiePlay.

Best Game Award Finalist

word game world

Buddy the Bug

Escape from Duck Cove

good friend

Inspiration of decay

Thanks to Qingyou DreamWorks, the game prototype development tool partner of this event, for its strong support of 2025indiePlay.

Qingyu Dream Workshop is a code-free programming game editor developed by Tencent Games. It integrates a rich free asset library, massive pre-made functions, and provides powerful multi-player physics synchronization capabilities and AIGC capabilities.It can help developers realize game creativity with low threshold and high efficiency!

Scan the QR code to follow the Qingyou DreamWorks service account to get the latest news and developer activities as soon as possible

This year, a special Qingyu Dream Selection Award will be set up. The awards will pay more attention to the core gameplay of the game and its compatibility with the Qingyu Dream Workshop editor development concept.This award will be specially reviewed by DreamWorks and a separate bonus will be provided.

After the review by Qingyou Dream Workshop, 3 works were finally selected to win the Qingyou Dream Selection award.

Qingyou Mengxuan

Guns, Princesses and Heroes

Thank you for your submission

Night Garden Travel Notes

Congratulations to the above shortlisted works and teams! In the indiePlay finalist area of ​​the WePlay Cultural Exhibition on November 22-23, 2025, all the above works will be available for trial play on site!

On the WePlay main stage on November 23, a grand awards ceremony will be held to announce the final winners of each award. Players are also welcome to witness this important moment for independent game developers every year!

The 2025 WePlay Cultural Exhibition is about to launch. This year’s event information has begun to be released one after another in the near future. You are also welcome to follow the official WePlay Cultural Exhibition account to obtain event information as soon as possible.

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