The Independent Games Festival has announced the eight Student Showcase winners for the 16th annual presentation of its prestigious awards, celebrating the brightest and most innovative creations to come out of universities and games programs from around the world in the past year.

This year's showcase of top student talent include the open-world cowboy whodunit Westerado from Dutch student developers Ostrich Banditos, the forced perspective puzzle game Museum of Simulation Technology from a student at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, and strikingly topical co-op hacker game Cyber Heist, a game from students at the University of Utah which challenges a devious Thief/Hacker duo to work together and take down the U.S. Department of Education in 2114, eliminating student debt forever.

In total, this year's Student Competition took in nearly 350 game entries across all platforms -- PC, console and mobile -- from a wide diversity of the world's most prestigious universities and games programs, making the Student IGF one of the world's largest showcases of student talent.