These Eight Video Games Will Compete for the Inaugural Tribeca Games Award
The accolade celebrates an unreleased game for its advancements in art and storytelling.
The 2021 Tribeca Festival on Thursday unveiled a lineup of eight video games set to join the showcase as official selections for the first time.
The featured titles include Harold Halibut (Germany), Kena: Bridge of Spirits (United States), Lost in Random (Sweden), NORCO (United States), Sable (United Kingdom), Signalis (Germany), The Big Con (Canada) and Twelve Minutes (United States).
The eight selections will go head-to-head for the inaugural Tribeca Games Award, which “honors an unreleased game for its potential for excellence in art and storytelling through design, artistic mastery and highly immersive worlds,” according to a release.
The festival first recognized video games in 2011, when Rockstar‘s L.A. Noire was picked up as the first-ever official selection. In honor of the ten year anniversary, Tribeca announced that Rockstar will return for a live outdoor performance on June 10 alongside Red Dead Redemption 2‘s original soundtrack producer Daniel Lanios, his band and other special guests.
“For over a decade, our mission has been to be a catalyst for placing games and their creators at the forefront of mainstream and artistic culture alongside film, TV and VR/AR,” said Tribeca Enterprises and Tribeca Festival Co-Founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal. “We continue to embrace the cross pollination and intersection of these storytellers with this year’s Tribeca Games Official Selections. And this is just the beginning.”
“This year’s selections showcase the potential for phenomenal storytelling in interactive experiences, with characters and worlds that explore the deep connection we have to ourselves and the world around us,” added Casey Baltes, Vice President of Tribeca Games. “From action/adventure to interactive thriller to intimate point and click narratives, these selections demonstrate a range of story and gameplay as well as visual style. We fell in love with the characters and the worlds that each game presented to us.”
In light of the ongoing pandemic, Tribeca Games will also provide a slew of digital experiences, including playable hands-on demos with remote streaming technology in a new Tribeca At Home program from June 11 to June 20. Demo sessions will need reservations, which you can make on Tribeca’s website starting May 24.
Additionally, the festival is also organizing the Tribeca Games Spotlight, a digital showcase for this year’s official selections where never-before-seen gameplay footage will be available to stream as part of the Summer Game Fest.
The 2021 Tribeca Festival will take place June 9 through June 20.
In other gaming news, the World Video Game Hall of Fame just announced this year’s inductees.
