SEPTEMBER 28 – OCTOBER 1, 2015
AUSTIN, TEXAS
International games festival announces over twenty additional games,
game jam competition, and major publisher showcase.
Source: Fantastic Fest/The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
AUSTIN, TX – August 31st, 2015 – Organizers of Fantastic Arcade have announced the complete list of titles for their annual free showcase of the best in independent games, now in its sixth year, and held in conjunction with Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest, the world’s largest genre film festival.
The 2015 Fantastic Arcade Showcase section consists of:
Her Story (Sam 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.
Super Hypercube (Kokoromi)
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.
Anamorphine (Artifact 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.
Flywrench (Messhof)
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’s 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.
LuminoCity (State of Play)
LuminoCity 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 & PLAY (Etter Studio)
PLUG & PLAY is an award winning Short Film and Game for your digital device. Explore the feelings of anthropoid creatures that go beyond sexuality and reproduction: love. PLUG & PLAY is a surreal play with plugs.
Sky Rogue (Fractal Phase)
A simple, accessible-yet-difficult, fwooshy, “feel good” 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.
Circa Infinity (Kenny 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.
Super Russian Roulette (Andrew 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.
Hylics (Mason 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.
Backer Reward (Breakfast Games)
As a Kickstarter Backer for an unfinished videogame, the destiny of the the game, and of the developers, lies in your hands. Backer Reward won “Best Overall Game” in the 2015 Global Game Jam.
Höme Improvisåtion (The 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 Having (Julian Glander)
A video game about weird, cool, beautiful things that sometimes happen in the outdoor world.
Murder (Exotworking)
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 Cat (George Royer)
In the wake of a failed Psychic Voyage, an intrepid feline traverses a blasted psychosphere.
Vignettes (Pol Clarissou, Armel Gibson)
A toyish surprise-o-rama by Pol Clarissou and Armel Gibson. A contemplative game, without text nor characters, where an object shapeshifts as the player spins it around, revealing the underlying story.
Fulcrum (Ben Swinden, Richard 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 Ep (ceMelusine)
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.
Chasm (Discord 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’Hood (Jose Sanchez, Gentaro Makinoda)
Envision your neighborhood, seek abundance, & avoid decay- by building beautiful modular arcologies that reach towards the sky.
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As with every year, Fantastic Arcade is home to some of the most exciting and unconventional live tournaments of any games festival. This year we’ll be bringing the following tournament games to you LIVE on the Venus Patrol twitch channel:
BADBLOOD, N++, Rocket League, Inversus, BOTOLO, HOKY, Regular Human Basketball and Videoball, and as well as Surprise Tournaments every day of the fest.
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Every day of Fantastic Arcade will be filled with panels lead by the creators of this year’s selected games as well as special guests, with confirmed appearances by:
Her Story’s Sam Barlow
Headlander creators Double Fine with project lead Lee Petty
Super Hypercube creators Kokoromi
Food Party and Hellmouth creator Thu Tran along with co-creator Ivan Safrin
Wheels of Aurelia creators Santa Ragione
and many more…
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Fantastic Arcade is also proud to announce its fourth annual Gamemaking Frenzy competition, in which amateur and pro game developers alike try their hand at creating an original videogame within two weeks. This year’s Gamemaking Frenzy has been christened DUPLICADE and begins on September 10th, ending September 24th. Selected game entries will appear in this year’s Starcade on October 1st, hosted by Wiley Wiggins. For more information about participating in the Gamemaking Frenzy, visit gamemakingfrenzy.com.
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Come celebrate the opening day of Fantastic Arcade with DJ’s, visuals, and party games like Butt Sniffin’ Pugs, Catnips, 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.
For the latest developments, visit the Fantastic Arcade Facebook and Twitter pages or sign up for the Fantastic Arcade mailing list.
Attend Fantastic Fest 2015
DAYTIME ONLY Badges, FAN Badges, and 2ND HALF Badges for Fantastic Fest 2015 are available for purchase here.
For the latest developments, visit the Fantastic Fest official site www.fantasticfest.com and follow us on Facebook & Twitter.
About Fantastic Arcade:
Fantastic Arcade is a four-day event that showcases a curated selection of brand-new independent games as well as a larger sampling of groundbreaking independent games from the last couple of years. International and local developers will be in attendance to show off their work, talk about the state of independent gaming via panels, and interact with attendees during play sessions, nightly parties, and happy hours. We feel that video games rightfully belong side by side with shorts and feature films at Fantastic Fest. The artistic merit of these games will be honored with both audience awards and a juried competition. Admission to Fantastic Arcade is free and open to the public.
Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. In years past the festival has been home to world premieres of JOHN WICK, FRANKENWEENIE, MACHETE KILLS, RED DAWN, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, APOCALYPTO, ZOMBIELAND and RED while the guest roster has included such talent as Tim Burton, Andy and Lana Wachowski, Robert Rodriguez, Rian Johnson, Mel Gibson, Bill Murray, Keanu Reeves, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Edward Norton, Ryan Reynolds, Karl Urban, Josh Hartnett, The RZA, Dolph Lundgren, Paul Rudd, Bill Pullman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau, George Romero, Darren Aronofsky and Mike Judge. Fantastic Fest also features world, national and regional premieres of new, up-and-coming genre films. Fantastic Fest has seen the acquisition of many titles, including BULLHEAD, KILL LIST, MONSTERS, KLOWN, THE FP, PENUMBRA, HERE COMES THE DEVIL, NO REST FOR THE WICKED, VANISHING WAVES, COMBAT GIRLS and I DECLARE WAR. Fantastic Fest is held each year at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas. Alamo Drafthouse has been named the best theater in the country by Entertainment Weekly, Wired and TIME. Variety included Fantastic Fest in a list of “10 Film Festivals We Love,” and was also named one of the “25 coolest film festivals” by Moviemaker Magazine.
Tim and Karrie League founded Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in 1997 as a single-screen mom and pop repertory theater in Austin. 17 years later, the now 19-location chain has been named “the best theater in America” by Entertainment Weekly and “the best theater in the world” by Wired. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has built a reputation as a movie lover’s oasis not only by combining food and drink service with the movie-going experience, but also introducing unique programming and high-profile, star studded special events. Alamo Drafthouse Founder & CEO, Tim League, created Fantastic Fest, a world renowned film festival dubbed “The Geek Telluride” by Variety. Fantastic Fest showcases eight days of genre cinema from independents, international filmmakers and major Hollywood studios. The Alamo Drafthouse’s collectible art gallery, Mondo, offers breathtaking, original products featuring designs from world-famous artists based on licenses for popular TV and Movie properties including Star Wars, Star Trek & Universal Monsters. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is expanding its brand in new and exciting ways, including Drafthouse Films which has garnered two Academy Award nominations in its short three year existence and Birth. Movies. Death, an entertainment content platform edited by veteran journalist Devin Faraci.