This DC-born indie game just won 2 awards at MAGFest

D.C.’s small but mighty indie gaming community has a reason to celebrate this week.

During the MAGFest Indie Video Game Showcase, a part of that giant celebration of gaming and video game music held this past weekend at the National Harbor where selected indie devs get to show off their games to attendees, local game Dr. Spacezoo won both the “best presence” and “best in show” awards.

So excited and honored to have won both Best Presence award and Best in Show award for Dr. Spacezoo #mivs @MAGFest Holy crap!! pic.twitter.com/qvwWl978XO

— Jesse / Dr. Spacezoo (@SmashRiot) January 8, 2017

Dr. Spacezoo is a shoot ’em up game developed by Bethesda-based Jesse Ozog, in which players try to rescue exotic space animals. We first wrote about the game in this list of D.C. indie games you can play right now.

Ozog told Technical.ly that this was his third year showing Dr. Spacezoo at MIVS, and the first year that there were awards associated with the showcase. He said the whole thing was “somewhat of a surprise” but he feels honored to have been recognized and to have received not one but two of the awards (see Tweet above) created by MIVS organizer Kat Pawlowski.

Even without an award, though, MIVS is a yearly experience that Ozog loves. “By far my favorite aspect of MIVS is being able to talk with all the other creative people (developers, designers, artists, musicians, etc) from the other teams showing or just attending,” he wrote in an email. “It’s a really good show to connect and talk with people that are passionate about making games and I really come away from the show re-energized to work on Dr. Spacezoo.”