From a Fitzroy sketch to an Apple stage: the awards journey
Five years after launch, the studio looks back at the night a quiet Melbourne project became an internationally decorated game — and what the trophies actually changed.
There is a photo on the studio wall of three people in slightly-too-formal clothes, holding an award designed by Apple and grinning like they got away with something. They did. Nobody ships a wordless two-hour puzzle game expecting an Apple Design Award — that's the entire point of the story.
This is the honest account of what winning did and didn't change — written now that enough time has passed to say it without sounding like a press release.
Studio Editorial
Long-form writing from the Gardens Between World team — guides, essays and the occasional confession from development.
In this article
- The nomination nobody saw coming
- What the awards actually changed
- The advice they give other indies
- What they're proudest of instead
The nomination nobody saw coming
The Apple nomination email was initially filed under spam — seriously. It sat unread for three days before a co-founder opened it on a tram. What followed was the strangest fortnight of the studio's life: being flown into a keynote orbit built for billion-user apps with a game about two kids and a lantern.
The Australian Game Developer Awards came next — Game of the Year, voted by the industry's own judges. If Apple was surreal, the AGDA was personal: the country's games community choosing its own quietest export.
The trophy sits next to the kettle. We decided early the kettle shouldn't get jealous.— The Voxel Agents, studio tour interview
What the awards actually changed
The honest answer: distribution, not direction. Awards put the game in front of audiences a Melbourne indie could never buy — but they didn't change what got made next. If anything, the studio doubled down on small: the awards proved the audience for quiet exists and is huge.
The advice they give other indies
Make the game only you can make — imitation is what gets lost in the noise, not quietness. Ship polish over scope; a finished two hours beats a padded twenty. And enter things: awards are lotteries, but they're lotteries whose tickets are free.
The full cabinet
- Apple Design Award — interaction innovation.
- AGDA Game of the Year — industry-voted, Australia's top honour.
- IMGA Grand Prix + BAFTA nomination + 40 more shelves' worth.
What they're proudest of instead
Not the cabinet — the mailbox. Letters from parents who played with their kids, from people who named the game in their wedding speeches, from one player who played it beside her father's hospital bed. The studio keeps that folder somewhere safer than the trophies.
Keep reading: The awards shelf on About · The press & creator kit
Play the game they're talking about
Award-winning and A$7.99 — the math is excellent.