The finalists for the 2008 Sense of Wonder Night were announced on September 16th. Never heard of Sense of Wonder Night? Earlier this year, Nintendo announced a new event that will take place during their annual Tokyo Game Show called Sense of Wonder Night, the Japanese equivalent of a cross between Independent Gaming Festival and Experimental Gameplay Workshop (the organizers said SoWN was inspired by the latter).

Just how awesome is SoWN? One of their criteria for entries states that the entry has to be "A 'terrific!' game, even though the reasons are not immediately clear: A game that at any rate gives a strong impression that 'this is terrific' as soon as you see it." How cool is that?

As with most "award events" of its kind, more than half of the entries were not in a playable form to the general public, surprising?

Camera
by Yareyare (Japan)

Depict
by Jesus Cuauhtemoc Moreno Ramos (Mexico)

Genocide Automation
by Naoya Sasaki (Japan)

GOMIBAKO
by Trash Box Team, PlayStation C.A.M.P! (Japan)

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
by The Odd Gentlemen (United States)

Moon Stories
by Daniel Benmergui (Argentina)

Nanosmiles
by Yu Iwai (Japan)

PixelJunk Eden
by Q-Games (Japan)

RANDY BALMA: MUNICIPAL ABORTIONIST
by Mark Essen, Messhof Games (United States)

Twin Tower
by OMEGA (Japan)

The Unfinished Swan
by Ian Dallas, University of Southern California (United States)

WorldIcelansista
by Ambition (Japan)

IndieGames has a concise summary of what actually happened at the event as well as in-depth analysis of each entries (except for poor Messhof, whose game was skipped because he was not present at the event), check out this!