Tokyo Design Awards Gold Winner

2026 | Professional

Awaken 8 : Fragments left behind

Entrant Company

Awaken 8

Category

Honorary Designer - Outstanding Independent Designer

Client's Name

Country / Region

United States

Linda Heartily Nguyen is an independent designer and creative director based in the United States. Largely self-taught, with only one year of formal study in graphic design, she began developing her cinematic RPG game project Awaken 8 in April 2025. Determined to realize her artistic vision, she built a complete art and rendering pipeline from scratch crafting a distinctive 3D CGI anime-realism style that fuses cinematic storytelling with emotional depth. As the sole artist, director, and writer, she integrates visual art, original music collaborations with independent K-pop artists, and narrative design to explore memory, emotion, and human connection between two worlds. Awaken 8 has been officially approved for release on Steam, with its world reveal planned campaign scheduled for January

Credits

Solo developer / Heartily studios
Linda Nguyen
Music producer / Trunxks Beats
Huy Tran
music producer
Freek Van workum
kpop group vocalist
Valkyria
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