In my 'copious spare time', as some of you know, I'm also the Chairman of the Independent Games Festival, and the Main Competition deadline was last Friday. We've just posted the full list of entries, and there are a total of 141, a new record.

There's some really interesting games on there, needless to say - from awesome grassroots indie titles like Armadillo Run, Golf?, Gibbage, Eets, and Everyday Shooter through higher-powered but still very much independent Xbox Live Arcade titles such as The Behemoth's Castle Crashers and frenetic racing game Mad Tracks. I think it's going to be a great year. [UPDATE: Andy Schatz has done an excellent breakdown of just a few of the more interesting entries over at Indiegamer.com.]

We've also updated the judges pretty comprehensively, adding some indie stalwarts alongside neat people like Penny Arcade's Tycho, Foundation9's Chris Charla, and even, most likely, a few people who read this very blog (yurgh!).

I will also repeat the other half of the update on IGF.com, 'cos I want modders to take notice: "The next deadline for prospective entrants is October 13, 2006 at 11:59pm PDT for the IGF Mod Competition, which is allowing mods from any game to compete - from Thief to Half-Life 2 to Oblivion to The Sims and beyond, all mods are eligible. From the entrants, we will pick Best Singleplayer FPS Mod, Best Multiplayer FPS Mod, Best RPG Mod, and Best 'Other' Mod finalists (each a $500 prize), and those winners will show at the 2007 GDC, competing for an overall $5,000 Best Mod prize." Get to it, haw!