The organizers of the 16th annual Independent Games Festival - the longest-running and largest showcase for independent developers - are proud to announce that the event has once again seen record entries for its latest Main Competition.

In total, the GDC 2014 co-located festival attracted 656 Main Competition entries from both established indie developers and first-time entrants, handily beating last year's high score of 589.

Some of the hundreds of promising titles entered in this year's IGF Main Competition include Stoic's turn-based strategy RPG The Banner Saga, Impromptu Games's puzzle platformer InFlux, and David S. Gallant's I Get This Call Every Day.

The entrants also feature titles such as Vlambeer's Nuclear Throne, TAISO by Zacozaco, and Quadrilateral Cowboy by Blendo Games. You can check out the full list of IGF entries here.

This year, each of the IGF 2014 Main Competition award categories will feature six finalists - up from last year's five finalists - except the Nuovo Award, which will have eight. The Main Competition finalists will be announced in January 2014, and all will be available in playable form at the IGF pavilion on the GDC 2014 show floor.

Once again, winners will be honored on stage during the IGF Awards ceremony during the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March, showcased in the IGF Pavilion on the GDC Expo Floor from March 19-21. (GDC 2013 itself will take place from March 17-21 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and the IGF-related Independent Games Summit, which has a special pass devoted to it once more this year, will take place on March 17-18.)

The festival's organizers have also provided an official JSON feed, which is updated regularly from live backend data. Teams can update their games entries, and interested IGF followers are welcome to use this feed to make their own custom IGF entry lists and pages.

The full announcement is available here: http://igf.com/2013/10/2014_independent_games_festiva_1.html