While these games are competing for the 2012 Independent Games Festival's Main Competition, the IGF awarded Student Showcase competitors today. Selected from two-hundred ninety-five separate game entries, eight winners have been crowned victorious.

The chosen IGF 2012 Student Showcase winners will all be playable at GDC 2012, held in San Francisco beginning on March 5th, 2012. The entire list of 2012 entries this year--many of which can be downloaded and played, for free--are all listed on the IGF website.

I personally haven't had a chance to play all of the student winners yet, but the ones I have managed to get my hands on, I've enjoyed quite a lot. For more information, you can check out my impressions of the Escherian gray-scale platformer, The Bridge, the charming co-op platformer, Way, and the honorably mentioned survival-racing game, Nitronic Rush, which I've previously covered here on Shacknews. I also got some hands-on time with Dust, the associated impressions for which can be found on Shacknews' sister-site, Indie Games Channel.

Without further ado, here's the IGF's 2012 list of the best independent student games from the past year, followed by the honorable mentions:

IGF 2012 Student Showcase Winners

• The Bridge (Case Western Reserve University)

• Dust (Art Institute of Phoenix)

• The Floor Is Jelly (Kansas City Art Institute)

• Nous (DigiPen Institute of Technology)

• One and One Story (Liceo Scientifico G.B. Morgagni)

• Pixi (DigiPen Institute of Technology - Singapore)

• The Snowfield (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab)

• Way (Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center)

Honorable mentions: Be Good (DigiPen Institute of Technology); Lilith's Pet (University of Kassel); Nitronic Rush (DigiPen Institute of Technology); Once Upon A Spacetime (RMIT); Tink (Mediadesign Highschool of Applied Sciences)