2015 fantastic arcade guide
DESCRIPTION
Fantastic Arcade showcases a curated selection of the best new independent videogames. With the brightest emerging talents and veteran game creators in attendance, Fantastic Arcade offers a free glimpse of the future of interactive art, with a cult flavor and an eye for the bizarre and wonderful found nowhere else. Play sessions, developer commentaries, tournaments, and more will take place during the last four days of Fantastic Fest—no badge required. We feel that video games rightfully belong side by side with shorts and feature films at Fantastic Fest. The artistic merits of games featured at Fantastic Arcade are honored with both audience awards and a juried competition.TRANSCRIPT
THE EVENTSFANTASTIC ARCADE OPENING PARTY
Come celebrate the opening day of Fantastic Arcade with DJs, visuals and party games like Butt Sniffin’ Pugs, Catnips, Worlds Fastest Pizza and Super Russian Roulette as well as an exclusive
peek into the Russian fairytale world of Forest of Sleep, at Empire Control Room, September 28th, 9pm-1am. Sponsored with help from our friends at Sony Playstation.
LOCATION: Empire Control Room / Sept. 28th / 9pm - 1am
STARCADE - “DUPLICADE”With your host Wiley Wiggins, watch as two contestants go head-to-head, answering
game trivia and playing this year’s best Gamemaking Frenzy games. All your favorite classic games will be discreetly replaced with just-as-good versions of indeterminate origin, all in a
showdown we have christened: DUPLICADE.LOCATION: Highball
FANTASTIC ARCADE DEVELOPER COMMENTARIESEvery day of Fantastic Arcade will be filled with panels led by the creators of this year’s
selected games, as well as special guests. Panelists include Her Story’s Sam Barlow, Headlander creators Double Fine, Superhypercube creators Kokoromi,“Food Party” and Hellmouth creator Thu Tran along with co-creator Ivan Safrin, Wheels of Aurelia creators
Santa Ragione and many more. Check schedule online for dates and times.LOCATION: Alamo South Lamar Theater 9
WELCOMEEach year Fantastic Arcade is tasked with bringing games to the greatest genre film fest in America, and it’s a task we take seriously. Games occupy a huge space in our culture, but they’re often viewed as a single monolithic commercial product — an arms race of spectacle and technology that rarely shows the blemish of human fingerprints. But we at Fantastic Fest already know that there are plenty of folks who would make the same sweeping generalizations over the state of movies, and we know better, don’t we? So it’s with great pride that we bring you this year’s collection of games, each one unique in some way, each one infused with the idiosyncratic vision of its creators. Welcome to Fantastic Arcade 2015!
-WILEY WIGGINS
OUR SPONSORS
JUEGOS ORIGINALSFor the sixth year, we bring you the best in new indie video games, plus talks, tournaments and special events. One major highlight: this year, we have six games housed in custom arcade cabinets that will ALL be ORIGINAL titles debuting for play at the fest. With help from Humble Bundle, Austin’s indie game collective, Juegos Rancheros, set some of the most explosively creative talents in the gaming world loose, and they returned to us with these six premiere games:
ALEAPALOMA DAWKINS
CALE BRADBURYCAILA THOMPSON-HANNANT
Co-created by Paloma Dawkins, best known as the artist behind KO-OP Mode’s Gardenarium,
Alea is a hiking simulator & experience of infinity: a reminder of the endless light and dark currently occurring in all directions, at all times. Just don’t
die and you should be okay.
HELLMOUTHTHU TRAN
IVAN SAFRIN
Hellmouth is a competitive cooking game where players collect ingredients from a
hellish death course and cook it to perfection to feed Satan. Hellmouth is co-created by Ivan Safrin and Thu Tran, the mind behind
the Independent Film Channel television show “Food Party,” and host of the Fantastic
Arcade 2014’s “Barfcade.”
CRAP! NO ONE LOVES MEARCANE KIDS
“My morning ritual is pretty simple: I check my phone and scream. Then I crawl into my
coffin, it’s all warmed up… let’s go for a ride.” CNOLM is a daily affirmation & multiplayer
coffin bobsledding journey into the afterlife from Arcane Kids, the creators of Zineth, Perfect Stride, Bubsy 3D: Bubsy visits the James Turrell
Retrospective & The Sonic Dreams Collection.
HOKYJAN WILLEM NIJMANKITTY CALIS
HOKY is arcade action on ice for up to four players, from the developers who separately helped bring you Nuclear Throne and Action Henk, and who together created Adventure Minute, the winner of Fantastic Arcade 2012’s Adventure Time Gamemaking Frenzy.
RISKY BISONJUSTIN SMITH
Risky Bison is a game about managing the financial affairs of a herd of buffalo, created by “the game developer’s game developer” Justin Smith, best known as the designer behind Enviro Bear 2000 and Desert Golfing.
WHEELS OF AURELIASANTA RAGIONE
Wheels of Aurelia is a narrative road trip game set in the roaring Italian ‘70s from the creators of FOTONICA & MirrorMoon EP. Half racing game and half interactive fiction, it tells the story of Lella, a restless woman driving on the roads of the western coast of Italy, the famous Via Aurelia.
JUEGOS ORIGINALS
A GOOD SNOWMAN IS HARD TO BUILDALAN HAZELDEN
BENJAMIN DAVIS & RYAN ROTH
A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build is an adorable puzzle game about being a monster and making snowmen.
BEGLITCHEDALEC THOMSON
JENNY JIAO HSIA
Beglitched is a game about insecurity, in our computers and ourselves. In a pastel world of networks where nobody truly knows what they’re doing, hacking is a magical art and the
notorious Glitch Witch is the most premium archmagi of the Net. By random circumstance, YOU are her new apprentice.
GNOGKO-OP MODE
Gnog is about exploring giant monsters and their inner worlds. Each head is part of an interconnected realm filled
with tantalizing secrets. Created by Montreal’s experimental game collective KO-OP Mode.
HOT DATEGEORGE BATCHELOR
Speed dating, with pugs.
FROGGY (IT’S HUNGRY)NATHALIE LAWHEAD
In this “no-holes-barred froggame,” you frog as FROGGY, a seasoned veteran with a strong inner voice
but no moral conviction, surviving one day at a time on Armageddon Highway.
SPOTLIGHTFantastic Arcade Spotlight games each display a unique quality we like to call “Arcadiness”. Together they make up the vanguard of the year’s entries, with new talent and new surprises from veterans.
SECRET LEGENDANDREW SHOULDICE
An homage to classic games with undeniable polish and style. An accompanying illustrated instruction booklet describes it as “...an adventuresome TRIANGLE-SEEK set in that place just beyond the farthest you’ve ever been. To avoid damaging your saved game, remember to hold the RESET button when turning the power off.”
STRAWBERRY CUBESLOREN SCHMIDT
Strawberry Cubes is an experiential open-world game which uses a cryptic set of glitches and magical transformations to abstractly evoke the feeling of losing a family member to Alzheimer’s disease.
THE TAMPERDROME COLLECTIONG.P. LACKEY
The Tamperdrome Collection is a suite of procedural generation experiments which allows you to create random dogs, islands, ghosts, cats and other strange things.
VERSNOOFKYLE REIMERGARTIN, IAN SNYDER
Fantastic Arcade award-winning developer Kyle Reimergartin and The Floor is Jelly creator Ian Snyder return with a game we describe as an experiment that will create shimmering mnemonic architecture in your mind, as you navigate a labyrinth using only your sonar-like extra senses.
SHELTER 2BASTIAN LEONHARDT STRUBE
Play the life of a mother lynx, pregnant at first, giving birth and continuing in to a journey of parenthood where nurturing her four cubs is paramount for their survival.
SPOTLIGHT
HER STORYSAM BARLOW
Her Story is a fresh take on the police procedural from Sam Barlow, creator of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Aisle. This critically-acclaimed full-motion
video game is like an interactive true crime documentary, letting you go hands-on with a police database full of live-action video footage.
ANAMORPHINEARTIFACT 5
Explore the past as you resolve the present in Anamorphine, a surreal adventure of rendered emotions. Journey into the mind of the main character,
a young man in post-traumatic denial. Using first-person exploration with minimalistic gameplay, Anamorphine conveys the narrative through environmental storytelling as you delve into physical and mental turmoil.
BACKER REWARDBREAKFAST GAMES
As a Kickstarter Backer for an unfinished videogame, the destiny of the game, and of the developers, lies in your hands. Backer Reward
won “Best Overall Game” in the 2015 Global Game Jam.
CIRCA INFINITYKENNY SUN
Circa Infinity is a mind-bending platformer that blends twitch gameplay with puzzle elements. Navigate through 50 hypnotizing
levels set in a visually striking hellscape, as you strive to reach the depths of this spectral maze.
FLYWRENCHMESSHOF
Flywrench is a game about piloting an abstract morphing bird-spaceship through a complex web of colored lines. Each maneuver
that Flywrench performs, such as flapping like a bird, or tumbling like a baton, changes its color. Match the ship’s color with a shape to pass
through it, hit an obstacle as the wrong color and fail. The pace is unrelenting and in a blink the challenge resets without penalty.
SHOWCASE
HÖME IMPROVISÅTIONTHE STORK BURNT DOWN
Höme Improvisåtion is a game about building crazy modular furniture. It is playable solo or with up to 5 friends working together. You can try to build the furniture correctly, or you can make new and terrifying furniture creations. The choice is yours.
LOVELY WEATHER WE’RE HAVINGARTIFACT 5
A video game about weird, cool, beautiful things that sometimes happen in the outdoor world.
HYLICSMASON LINDROTH
Hylics, the most ambitious project yet by Mason Lindroth, takes traditional RPG conventions and squishes, flattens, rolls and coils them like so much dough through the pixel-dithered vision of its creator. Randomly generated textual elements round out this surreal playscape, leaving something that will continue to entertain and mystify long after you finish interacting with it.
LUMINO CITYJULIAN GLANDER
Lumino City is a BAFTA-winning puzzle adventure game, and the sequel to Lume. Three years in the making, it’s handmade entirely out of paper, card, miniature lights and motors. Discover gardens in the sky, towers marooned high on an immense waterwheel, and houses dug precariously into cliffs. To create the environment, a ten-foot-high model city was built by hand and by laser cutter, with each motor and light wired up individually, bringing the scenes to luminous life.
PLUG & PLAYETTER STUDIO
Explore the feelings of anthropoid creatures that go beyond sexuality and reproduction: love. PLUG & PLAY is a surreal play with plugs.
SHOWCASE
SKY ROGUEFRACTAL PHASE
A simple, accessible-yet-difficult, fwooshy, “feelgood” arcade flight simulator. Blow things up over land, sea and air, on an infinite number
of procedurally-generated islands. Choose one of a diverse set of aeros and kit it out with a dizzying array of weaponry. Go toe-to-toe with
enemy aces or assault giant flying aircraft carriers and battleships, but watch out for volleys of missiles; when you die, you’re dead.
SUPER RUSSIAN ROULETTEANDREW REITANO
Pull up a chair and rustle up some virtual nihilism, pardner. Super Russian Roulette pits you and up to two friends or strangers against a trash-talking
cowboy, impatient to get on with the ultimate game of chance. There’s a light bullet in the Zapper’s chamber: is your name on it? Super Russian Roulette is a new title running from a homebrew cartridge in an actual vintage Nintendo
Entertainment System… with a cowboy hat on it.
MURDEREXOTWORKING
Try to become king and stay in the throne to secure a lasting reign in this nasty stab-a-roo. A game about trust, mistrust and embracing danger with open
arms in order to acquire true bliss.
PSYCHIC CATGEORGE ROYER
In the wake of a failed Psychic Voyage, an intrepid feline traverses a blasted psychosphere.
VIGNETTESPOL CLARISSOUARMEL GIBSON
A toyish surprise-o-rama. A contemplative game, without either text or characters, where an object shapeshifts as the player spins it around,
revealing the underlying story.
SHOWCASE
FULCRUMBEN SWINDENRICHARD FLANAGAN
Lost on a snowy mountaintop, amidst rad ruins of an ancient alien civilization. Your path is clear. Do tricks, get orbs, be cool.
EAST VAN EPCEMELUSINE
East Van EP is a collection of short games by Glitchhiker creator ceMelusine. The first two games in the collection presented at this year’s fest are titled ORACLE and Summon The Apgrod. Find out who or what an Apgrod is, serve drinks, shoot things, complete a procedural summoning ritual, witness prophecies and more.
CHASMDISCORD GAMES
Chasm is a procedurally-generated Platform Adventure, taking equal inspiration from hack ‘n slash dungeon crawlers and Metroidvania-style platformers. It will immerse you in a procedurally-generated fantasy world full of exciting treasure, deadly enemies, and abundant secrets.
BLOCK’HOODJOSE SANCHEZGENTARO MAKINODA
Envision your neighborhood, seek abundance, and avoid decay by building beautiful modular arcologies that reach towards the sky.
SUPERHYPERCUBEKOKOROMI
Get a sneak peak at one of the first titles for Sony Playstation’s Project Morpheus VR headset. In this first-person puzzler from Kokoromi, fly through endless waves of abstract geometry in the warm analog glow of virtual neon, and rotate a cluster of cubes to narrowly fit through an endless stream of form-fitting walls. Surrounded by glowing light and gorgeous color, your awareness focuses on the cluster slowly growing before you, and the ever-changing passages that lie ahead.
SHOWCASE
BADBLOOD | WINNIE SONG
Badblood is a violent stealth game for two. Outwit your neighbor in this intimate and visceral local multiplayer, where each challenger sees the arena from different orientations. Same bloody field, different bloody perspective. Hide, seek, and kill.
N++ | METANET SOFTWARE
N++ is a fast-paced, action-packed puzzle platformer set in the distant future. You play as a ninja -- darting through obstacles, narrowly evading a slew of inadvertently homicidal enemy robots, and collecting gold in a minimalist, sci-fi world. You know, traditional ninja stuff.
INVERSUS | HYPERSECT
Inversus is a minimalist action-strategy game by Ryan Juckett. It is played on a grid of black and white tiles where each player is restricted to either side. Players flip tiles towards their color to gain control and close in on the enemy. With every action changing the play space, each round evolves into a unique battle field.
BOTOLO | IAN SNYDER
Fast-paced electronic keep-away for two.
VIDEOBALL | ACTION BUTTON
VIDEOBALL is a new sport for your television. VIDEOBALL is simple enough for a party. VIDEOBALL is deep enough for the best party ever.
ROCKET LEAGUE | PSYONIX
Soccer meets driving once again in the long-awaited, physics-based multiplayer-focused sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars!
HOKY | JAN WILLEM NIJMAN / KITTY CALIS
Join Hosts JW Nijman and Kitty Calis as we hit the ice for their premiere follow-up to minimalist sports game TENNNES.
REGULAR HUMAN BASKETBALL | POWERHOOF
Just Regular Human B-Ball. No giant mechanical death machines here!
As with every year, Fantastic Arcade is home to some of the most exciting and unconventional live tournaments of any games festival. Competition is open to all; battle for prizes and glory as an audience cheers you on. This year we’ll be bringing the following tournament games to you LIVE on Twitch’s Venus Patrol channel, along with surprise matches each night at midnight. Every event will be emceed by Fantastic Arcade special guest hosts (who are serious professionals) as well as the game’s creators!
TOURNAMENTS