TLDR; Crossposting this here bc I 4got to do it earlier... but in case you didn't know, the New Zealand Game Awards (The Pavs) are coming up soon, and Small Town Emo (demo) was nominated for four award categories!

ABOUT 'THE PAVS':

The Pavs are a celebration of Australia and NZ’s best and boldest game development achievements. Organised by the New Zealand Games Festival (NZGF), a grassroots not-for-profit whose purpose is to celebrate NZ and Australian games, and promote the industry as a “tool for social good and old fashioned fun”.

ABOUT OUR NOMINATIONZ:

Small Town Emo managed to get nominations across four different categories!

• The ‘Slice of Heaven’ Grand Prize
• The Poetic Serving: Excellence in Narrative
• The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art
• The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation

WHOMSTS ELSE GOT NOM'D:

The ‘Slice of Heaven’ Grand Prize: In the Slice of Heaven category there’s (of course) Dredge by legendary local Ōtautahi team Black Salt Games — if you haven’t heard of Dredge you absolutely must. go. play. it! Also up for this big hot ~supreme~ Pav award is the intriguing tabletop game Ovation, who have a Kickstarter page you can take a sniff at if you like the sound of a late 18th century composer-themed deckbuilding game.

The Poetic Serving: Excellence in Narrative: Alongside us in the Poetic Serving (narrative) category is The Ugly Club, which absolutely looks like the best idea ever: it’s an Aotearoa-based dating sim where all of the characters are anthropomorphic wildlife from NZ.

The Decorative Piece: Excellence in Visual Art: We’re also in the visuals category alongside Dredge (again, classic Dredge lol), Epicool Kai Karting (a charming racing game based on a Kiwi kids’ cartoon), Little Robo Climber (an adorable retro-platformer with detailed pixel art), and Neon Knives (a two player stealth PVP game with beautifulll graphics)

The Diverse Delight: Excellence in Representation: This diversity category nomination is super near and dear to us. We’re up for a representation award against Epicool Kai Karting and Sub-Verge which is an unreleased relationship building game involving a character in slowly sinking submarine (very topical).

Check out the rest of the 2023 Pavs Finalists here. It’s a fantastic list of really wicked (and very different) games from our corner of the globe. Hells yeah.

nzgamesfest.com/the-pavs/2023-finalists