The Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards Ceremony at Tokyo Game Show 2025 is underway, with multiple awards up for grabs for aspiring indie creators. Read on to learn more about the event and its schedule.
Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Winners
Top 12 Best Student Games - Grand Prize and Excellence Awardees
| Criteria | Nominees |
|---|---|
| The best 12 student-made games that surpassed the panel’s first-selection round | ⚫︎ 🏆 Tricolo - Grand Prize 🏆
⚫︎ 🥈 Key Typer - Excellence Award 🥈 ⚫︎ 🥈 DRIFTED - (ドリフテッド) - Excellence Award 🥈 ⚫︎ There! Edit Point! (そこ！編集点！) ⚫︎ Ingashii (インガシィ) ⚫︎ Slitherise ⚫︎ Recollection (リコレクション) ⚫︎ Nurtomo (ヌルトモ) ⚫︎ Trade Girl (トレガール) ⚫︎ Algomate Colony ⚫︎ Irritate ⚫︎ Perfect Back Parker |
From hundreds of hopeful entries, only twelve student-made games advanced beyond the first round of judging at the Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025.
Among them, three titles rose to the very top. The Excellence Awards, recognizing outstanding achievement in game design, went to DRIFTED, a platforming adventure from UrbanFox, and Key Typer, a fast-paced 2D keyboard-typing action game by BooGyahMon.
The evening’s highest honor, the Grand Prize, was claimed by MP for Tricolo, a clever and inventive puzzle game that distinguished itself as the standout of this year’s competition.
About the Winners
Grand Prize - Tricolo
| Genre (Platform) | Puzzle (PC) |
|---|---|
| Representative | Tokyo University of Science |
| Developer | MP |
Tricolo is a puzzle game where players must match the corresponding colored circle into the same square. What makes the game stand out from other puzzle games is its unique 3x3 grid as well as the unique take on limited moves.
For context, the overall move counter only decreases when each color has used up all of its moves, dividing up the overall puzzle into a series of smaller segments to solve with each color. In addition to the game’s novel movement concept, it also includes unique puzzle mechanics like warp tiles, impassable tiles, and the like.
Excellence Award - DRIFTED
| Genre (Platform) | Adventure, Platformer (PC) |
|---|---|
| Representative | Tokyo University of the Arts |
| Developer | UrbanFox |
DRIFTED is an adventure platformer where players control a paper plane as it falls towards the goal in style. The plane itself flies forward on its own, meaning players will only need to guide the plane by lowering or raising its depth so that it doesn’t run into hazards and the ground.
The main appeal of the game is its dark atmosphere and visuals, as well as how the visuals translate to the gameplay. The hazards are also quite unique, as some of them are not what you expect.
Excellence Award - Key Typer
| Genre (Platform) | Typing Game (PC) |
|---|---|
| Representative | Osaka Electro-Communication University |
| Developer | GKCHN |
Key Typer is a unique typing game where players must simply type the necessary keys to advance their block. The visuals of the game are what separate it from the other nominees, as the animations of the moving blocks are satisfying to look at. The game itself has different typing challenges where players must press the necessary key, hold a key, and even type out a whole word. It’s a game that can be played by anyone, and it will definitely help in familiarizing the layout of a keyboard.
Other Nominees
- left to right: そこ！編集点, インガシィ, Slitherise, リコレクション, ヌルトモ, トレガール, AlgomateColony, irritate, Perfect Back Parker
The other 9 nominated games included in the running also had unique concepts of their own, like そこ！編集点 (There! Edit Point!) which has the eye-catching graphics of a video editing program all while guised as an auto-platformer, or インガシィ(ingashii) where you can steal your opponent’s attacks by storing them in photographs in real-time battles, and even AlgomateColony, which gamifies programming to make it more approachable with its nostalgic user experience and graphics.
Everything We Know About the Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards
Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards Ceremony Schedule
The Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards Ceremony featured the nominees and winners for award categories such as Top 12 Best Games, as decided by a panel of esteemed judges.
The event was livestreamed on September 25, 2025, at 10:00 a.m.PT/10:00 p.m. ET, on KONAMI's Official YouTube channel.
Check out the time tables below to find out what time the online program started in each region.
Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards Ceremony Start Time
| Region | Local Release Time |
|---|---|
| United States (ET) | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 1:00 a.m. |
| United States (PT) | Wednesday, September 24, 2025, 10:00 p.m. |
| United Kingdom | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 6:00 a.m. |
| Central Europe | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 7:00 a.m. |
| New Zealand | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 6:00 p.m. |
| Australian East Coast | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 3:00 p.m. |
| Australian West Coast | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 1:00 p.m. |
| Japan | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 2:00 p.m. |
| Philippines | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 1:00 p.m. |
| South Africa | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 7:00 a.m. |
| Brazil | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 2:00 a.m. |
| Universal Time (UTC) | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 5:00 a.m. |
What is the Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards Ceremony?
The Indie Games Contest Student Championship 2025 Awards is an awards ceremony held as part of Tokyo Game Show, where Konami spotlights outstanding student-developed indie games. Held annually, it serves as a platform for emerging talent to showcase their work to a wider audience and gain recognition within the industry.
