The icy world of the game Frostpunk 2 warmed the hearts of the jury at the Digital Dragons Awards 2025, where 11 bit studios took home three statues, or “dragon eggs,” including the award for the Best Polish Game of 2024. The ceremony was held on May 19th at the ICE Krakow Congress Centre during one of Europe’s largest gaming conferences.
Frostpunk 2, the sequel to the award-winning survival strategy hit from 2018, won awards for Best Polish Game, Best Design, and Best Game Audio. The combination of difficult decisions, city-building, and eerie music in a frozen world left a strong impression, and you can find out more in our review.
Simultaneously, the debut game Nobody Wants to Die from Critical Hit Games attracted attention with its noir-style detective story, winning awards for Best Narrative and Best Visual Art in a Game thanks to its dystopian depiction of New York. Rage Quit Games studio won the award for Best Polish Mobile Game with the title Tomorrow: MMO Nuclear Quest, while the Canadian game Balatro by developer LocalThunk was named Best Foreign Game thanks to its addictive card-based gameplay mechanics.
A special moment of the evening was when Magdalena Cielecka from Anshar Studios received the Special Recognition Award. As a developer, researcher, producer, and academic lecturer, Cielecka has left her mark on titles such as Gamedec and Irony Curtain. The Krakow Technology Park, the organizer of the Digital Dragons conference, honored her as one of the most influential figures in the Polish gaming industry. The evening also hosted Tomáš Dvořák, known as Floex, whose compositions for Samorost and Papetura added a magical touch to the evening.
For the first time, the Indie Dragons Awards put the focus on smaller studios, with first place going to Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken by scriptwelder, followed by XYZ from Screen Tear Studios and ARMS OF GOD from Dark Jay studio.
