• What the Car? picked up the Best Mobile game Award at Gamescom Latam 2024
• The awards were hosted in partnership with the BIG Festival
• All the nominees were playable on the show floor, with mobile happily mingling with PC

Last week, the inaugural Gamescom Latam event took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, aiming to highlight Latin America's growing presence in gaming alongside celebrating the industry worldwide. Part of that included the game awards in partnership with the BIG Festival, with the winners announced during a fancy presentation at the event.

There were 13 categories in total, with all the finalists chosen by a panel of 49 judges. All the nominees were playable at the Sao Paulo Expo at a sizeable booth attendees were unlikely to miss. It was nice to see the mobile games mixed in with the PC nominees rather than being restricted to their own section, as you might expect. Mobile is just as important, after all.

Of all those categories, naturally, we were most interested in the “Best Mobile Game” award, which ultimately went to Triband ApS' What the car? A worthy winner if you ask me. Our own Jupiter Hadley highlighted the game previously in her article spotlighting ten amazing games you might not have heard of, so it's great to see it get even more recognition. Even if that means we might need to adjust that list if it becomes a household name.

But, although What the Car? drove away with the coveted award in the trunk, it's still worth shouting out the other nominees. They made it through the shortlist after all, so you can expect good quality experiences:

• Junkworld – Ironhide Game Studio
• Bella Pelo Mundo – Plot Kids
• An Elmwood Trail – Techyonic
• Sibel's Journey – Food for Thought Media
• Residuum Tales of Coral – Iron Games
• SPHEX – VitalN

And, partly because I like lists and partly because it's always good to shout out games, the other winners were:

• Game of the Year – Chants of Sennar - Rundisc
• Best Game from Latin America – Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure – Furniture & Mattress
• Best Brazilian Game – Momodora: Moonlit Farewell - Bombservice
• Best Casual Game – Station to Station – Galaxy Groove Studios
• Best Audio – Dordogne - UMANIMATION and UN JE NE SAIS QUOI
• Best Art – Harold Halibut – Slow Bros. UG.
• Best Multiplayer – Extremely Powerful Capybaras – Studio Bravarda and PM Studios
• Best Narrative – Once Upon A Jester – Bonte Avond
• Best XR/VR – Sky Climb - VRMonkey
• Best Gameplay – Pacific Drive – Ironwood Studios
• Best Pitch from Regional Game Development Associations – Dark Crown – Hyper Dive Game Studio

If you want to play the award-winning game, What the Car? is available now on the App Store through Apple Arcade, a subscription service that costs $6.99 (or your local equivalent) a month. You can download it using the big button below.