Ian Bogost's A Slow Year is a finalist for the Independent Game Festival Nuovo Award. The Nuovo celebrates "off-the-wall" experimental games.

A Slow Year is a game of playable haiku about the seasons played on a 30-year old Atari Video Computer System, as well as PC or Mac.

In his 2009 book Racing the Beam: the Atari Video Computer System (with co-author Nick Montfort), Bogost reminded the game world of Atari's foundation role in the formation of the video arcade and modern video game industries. Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Bogost has extended his interest in Atari by having students design games for the Atari system.

A Slow Year is Bogost's second original release for the Atari, after last year's Guru Meditation, a zen game for Atari and iPhone based on Amiga historical folklore. Bogost explains the unusual concept of the game on his website:

"A Slow Year is a collection of four games, one for each season, about the experience of observing things. These games are neither action nor strategy: each of them requires a different kind of sedate observation and methodical action.
The game attempts to embrace maximum expressive constraint and representational condensation. I want to call them game poems. The set comprises a little collection, a kind of videogame chapbook.

A Slow Year will be released in early 2010, for PC and Mac in a custom Atari emulator, and for Atari as a limited edition cartridge and poetry set."

The IGF awards program takes place March 11, 2010 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.