Game Developers Conference honours two Swiss games

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) attracts over 22,500 attendees, and is the primary forum where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in the development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry. The next conference will take place in San Francisco in two weeks.
 
One of the elements of GDC is an exhibition called GDC Play, an initiative to promote emerging developers. With this year's return comes the introduction of Best in Play, a showcase of GDC Play's finest games. For this new 'Best in Play' award program, all GDC Play exhibitors have been judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors. Eight participating games have been selected and announced as 'Best in Play' winners yesterday. Winners will receive two All-Access passes to GDC 2014. Special 'Best in Play' designations will be attached to the honorees' GDC Play kiosks at GDC 2013, where their games will be playable to all GDC attendees.
 
Two of the eight selected games come from Switzerland: Grooh and Krautscape.
 
Grooh is a so called puzzle game. The user has to help a cute monster to find a hidden treasure in a castle. Boxes, teleporters, and tiles with special properties complicate things in later levels. The game was developed by the start-up Digidingo. DigiDingo is a Swiss based studio that focuses on creating games and applications for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The company was founded in 2007 and is based in the Canton of Zurich.
 
Krautscape is an action-packed multi-player racing game, where the currently leading player builds the track during the race. The track, as the most important part of any racing game, emerges dynamically during gameplay. This leads to a completely original and unique gaming experience for every race. Krautscape is currently in development for Mac and PC. Krautscape is developed by two young designers from Zurich: Mario von Rickenbach and Michael Burgdorfer.