The competition was fierce and we thank everyone who entered for all their hard work and excellent ideas! The twenty semi-finalists for ScreenBurn at SXSW's first annual Game Design Competition are listed below with ten names and games for each category:

Casual Game Design Semi-Finalists:

Blorst (Jerry Paffendorf); Codename: ULTRA (Cadin Batrack); Coil Flow (Jordan Booth); Farm Follies (Andrew Gardner); FLOAT (Anders Howard): Full Moon Manor (Joshua Kulinski); Phase (Seth Smith); Piano Ninja (Evan Lenz); Sloppy Ice (Gwen Murray); Tick Tock Universe (Christian Arca).

AAA Game Design Semi-Finalists:

Boomer (Matthew Jones); A Chicago House Story (Mason Dixon); Cover Up (Kristin Boyett); Glaxal (Morgan Craft); Lil' Sandscape (Rianti Hidayat); ManorMeta (Evonne Heyning); Mixtape (Nathan Philpott); Project Z.E.U.S. (Seth Smith); Reaction (Elyse Kloeden); Ringmaster (Jill Taffet).

Congrats to all who made it this far! The semi-finalists will now construct a slideshow presentation that graphically illustrates their concept, complete with art and notes. The presentation is due by Friday, February 27. Each of our semi-finalists who submits a final presentation will receive a free 2009 Interactive Festival registration, which includes admission to all ScreenBurn at SXSW activities. Then four finalists in each category will be announced on (or before) March 13.

During ScreenBurn at SXSW, those eight finalists will present their ideas and PowerPoint presentations to a jury of professional game designers who will judge and provide meaningful game design feedback. Finally, a grand prize winner in each category will be determined by jury vote and audience reaction. To complete the whole ride, a game industry professional from the panel will interview the winner of each category at Studio SX. Good luck to all our semi-finalists!