I've been in Paris for the last week judging the game development category of the Imagine Cup. I'll write a full account later, but I wanted to report that the winners were announced today. The games needed to appeal to the competition theme of "imagine how technology can enable a sustainable environment."

The first place winner was City Rain, a fantastic game from Brazil that's a sort of blend of SimCity and Tetris, in which the player must complete environmentally themed challenges. The game design, visual design, and sound design are all fantastic yet simple, and the game tightly couples the theme and the gameplay.

Second and third place winners were Future Flow from Belgium and Clean Up from Korea, respectively.

More on my impressions of all the games and the event in general shortly. There's also a Microsoft press release with all the winners in every category.