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What Remains of Edith Finch beats out AAA giants to win the BAFTA for Best Game

Double Fine's Tim Schafer recognised on the night with a BAFTA Fellowship

In perhaps the biggest upset of the evening, US indie developer Giant Sparrow took home the top award at last night's video game BAFTA awards.

Despite appearing in the same category as some of the biggest budget, and best selling games of 2017, What Remains of Edith Finch won out as Best Game. It is the developer's second ever BAFTA win, having won Debut Game in 2013 for The Unfinished Swan.

Receiving a total of nine nominations, Ninja Theory took home the most awards of the evening with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice winning the BAFTA for Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, British Game, Game Beyond Entertainment, while Melina Juergens won in the Performer category for her role as Senua.

What Remains of Edith Finch was among the most nominated games of the evening, being recognised in six other categories.

"This is incredible," said creative director Ian Dallas while accepting the Best Game award. "I wrote a speech for all the other awards, but this one I figured there would be something in Japanese."

Nintendo however, took home only three awards despite receiving eight nominations with two games across six categories.

Super Mario Odyssey was the only other multi-award winner on the night coming out on top for Family Game and Game Design, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild won Innovation.

Appearing in a total of four categories, Infinite Fall's first game Night in the Woods won the BAFTA for Narrative, missing out to Gorogoa for Debut Game.

Horizon Zero Dawn, which was the second-most nominated game on the night appearing in eight categories, took home the award for Original Property.

Following on from last year's win for Multiplayer, Overwatch appeared again to win the BAFTA for Evolving Game.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 grabbed a surprise win for Multiplayer, beating out both Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

The final two winners of the night were Cuphead which secured the BAFTA for Music, and Golf Clash which won Mobile Game.

Tim Schafer was recognised on the night with the BAFTA Fellowship which is awarded to people working in film, television, and games.

Previous recipients from the games industry include id Software founder John Carmack, Valve founder Gabe Newell, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, and Rockstar Games.

"My career has had so many near-death experiences where it almost ended," Schafer said, accepting the award.

He added that he hoped his success could encourage other developers to create weird and wonderful experiences that defy convention.

"We really want those new voices, new perspectives to come and shake things up," he said. "To come from groups that have not been represented in games so far, and to tell new stories."

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Ivy Taylor avatar
Ivy Taylor: Ivy joined GamesIndustry.biz in 2017 having previously worked as a regional journalist, and a political campaigns manager before that. They are also one of the UK's foremost Sonic the Hedgehog apologists.
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