At the Independent Games Festival Awards ceremony in San Francisco last week, seven different independently created games received awards for their respective achievements, and recognition for the teams that made them.

Last week before the show, we asked you to ‘Hold Thumbs for QCF Design’ and it turns out our confidence in the Cape Town-based indie developer wasn’t misplaced – the team was amongst the winners during the IGF Awards and walked away with the ‘Excellence in Design’ award during the event for Desktop Dungeons.

Other winners included Mojang for its work on the extraordinary sandbox creation game, Minecraft, as well as Frictional Games for its work on Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Check out the full list of winners below:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($20,000)

• Minecraft, by Mojang

Nuovo Award ($5,000)

• Nidhogg, by Messhof

Excellence in Visual Art ($2,500)

• BIT.TRIP RUNNER, by Gaijin Games

Excellence in Audio ($2,500)

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games

Excellence in Design ($2,500)

• Desktop Dungeons, by QCF Design

Best Student Game ($2,500)

• FRACT, by University of Montreal

Technical Excellence ($2,500)

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games

Best Mobile Game ($2,500)

• Helsing’s Fire, Ratloop

Audience Award ($2,500)

• Minecraft, by Mojang

Direct2Drive Vision Award ($10,000)

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games

Congratulations to the winners, and especially to QCF Design! You can watch the team accepting their award in the full IGF Awards/Game Developers Choice Awards video below:

GDC 2011 IGF and GDC Awards

Tags: desktopdungeons, gamedevelopersconference, gdc2011, igf, independentgamesfestival, qcfdesign, southafrica