Want to get a taste of the amazing lineup coming to Fantastic Arcade 2012 well ahead of the crowd? Join us this Sunday, September 2nd, at 4PM for our fifteenth edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at The Highball, where we’ll be presenting three of Fantastic Arcade’s finest: SUPER TIME FORCE, SUPER HEXAGON & MCPIXEL.
Headlining the event will be SUPER TIME FORCE, the ultra-amazing time-bending future-shooter from #SWORCERY & CRITTER CRUNCH creators Capy, which I’ll let them explain here:
THE YEAR: 198X
LOCATION: OUTER-SPACE / 4TH DIMENSION AKA TIME
THE PROBLEM: EVERYTHING’S GONE TO SHIT!
THE MISSION: FIX IT!
Super TIME Force is a rip-roarin’, run ‘n gun action game with a time-traveling twist that creates opportunities for both strategy and mayhem, or, “strayhem”. With an ingenious “time-rewinding” mechanic, STF takes the action to intense new peaks by allowing players to team up with their own past replays of a level in an utterly unique single-player co-op experience that sees all of your past-lives fighting together at once. It’s fun to play with yourself! You command the elite, time-travelling soldiers of the STF in their mission to make the world a more awesome place by jumping through time and messing with the history books. At every event the STF endeavours to undo, the evil Blounbots appear and attack, seemingly trying to undo their undoing. Still with us? Good! Who commands these filthy space robots? What is their agenda? And why do they hate freedom so much? Tune in, er… Play the game to find out!
We’ll also be running the latest version of SUPER HEXAGON, the game we’ve previously described as a “27th century space-disco teen-laser-punk arcade hit”, created by Terry Cavanagh, best known for games like VVVVVV. This game’s been stealing our time like no other over the past couple months, in a neverending string of 15-20 seconds at a time.
And finally, we’ll be showing off MCPIXEL by Sos, one of the best slapstick-comedy games we’ve ever played, where you’re given 20 seconds to save the day in hundreds of precarious and stupid situations, and kicking the nearest person in the junk is always a legitimate & sometimes actually lucrative option.
Everything will be kicking off Sunday, September 2nd, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come early to get a head-start on your Fantastic Arcade 2012 experience, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and say hello to the people changing the way you think about games!
Want to know why we think SPELUNKY is very easily one of the greatest videogames ever made? Been playing for weeks and want to vent to creator Derek Yu about “the tunnel man”? You’ll be able to do both, this Sunday, August 5th, at 4PM, as we devote the entirety of our fourteenth edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at The Highball to Mossmouth‘s procedurally-generated platform adventure.
You may have already seen us gush about SPELUNKY in the last FISTFUL OF INDIES roundup, or played the freeware original (still available for PC & Mac), but the Xbox Live Arcade version of SPELUNKY released in early July was a true landmark achievement: an accessible but still immensely challenging platformer that re-arranges itself every time you play, fantastically full of layer upon layer of secrets.
Not only will we be bringing the single & multiplayer version of the new game, and also be setting up the 2008 original — to give a sense of how far it’s come — but creator Derek Yu will be joining us remotely from his SF studio for a live chat about the game, and taking your questions/complaints/curses for that time that fire frog landed in the shop and set everyone in the black market out for your blood.
Everything will be kicking off Sunday, August 5th, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come early to get a head-start on multiplayer domination, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and say hello to the people changing the way you think about games!
After another month’s break, and a little bit too much time since I showed these games live, presented below is the latest in our regular series of indie games both local and global worth paying attention to, fully annotated & linked up for your pleasure.
In our continued effort to do a better job documenting our regular monthly meetups, above you’ll find the team at White Whale Games — from L to R: Adrian Lopez-Mobilia, Jason Rosenstock, Jo Lammert & George Royer (seated in front) — introducing themselves and their debut game, GOD OF BLADES.
More directly, though, yesterday I mentioned that our playable tournament would revolve around GOD OF BLADES co-op mode, but things have changed overnight. Instead, what we’ll be showing is a brand new, previously unseen mode, henceforth to be known as SLAYERS.
Here’s White Whale‘s George Royer to explain what SLAYERS mode is, and why you should be excited for it:
One night the ghost of Robert E. Howard, Football, and Bushido Blade all got really drunk and went home together. Nine months later, SLAYERS was born.
In the SLAYERS feature of God of Blades (PC and Mac versions), two players take on the roles of the enemies from the main campaign mode, to duel one another on a desolate bridge for the favor of their blasphemous gods. The match begins with each player selecting their champion. In addition to the champion, each player begins with a bank of 25 foot-soldiers, and every time one of these soldiers is cut down, another rushes to join the fray.
Champions are far stronger than foot-soldiers and enter the struggle when a player’s reinforcements are depleted or when one player successfully battles their way to their opponents end of the bridge. Players gain ground by defeating their opponents without losing their soldier. Victory is achieved when one player bests the other’s champion.
Matches of SLAYERS are fast, brutal, and gorgeous.
As a reminder, this meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS will take place Sunday, July 1st, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704 — hope to see you there!
Where has the love for pulp paperback fantasy gone? It’s gone directly into GOD OF BLADES, as you will soon see this Sunday, July 1st, at 4PM, as we present the swordfighting epic debut from local indie upstart White Whale Games at our thirteenth edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at The Highball.
White Whale ultra-succinctly describe the game as “a love-song to pulp fantasy tales of yore, 70s synth-prog-landscape oddities, and forgotten places”, and we’ll add more pointedly that it’s one of the most satisfying real-physics swordfighters you’ve played in ages — a 2D sidescroller that truly understands weight and rhythm.
White Whale will be on hand at the Highball to explain in greater detail how to make a game which distills swordplay and action to its core also touch more deeply on aspects of “memory, culture, and loss in terms of stories, books, and the communities that love them.”
They’ll also be premiering a new co-op survival mode of the game with a chance for you to win prizes like T-shirts and limited prints of the amazing custom pulp book covers they’ve created for the game, as above (see more of those in their gallery here!).
Everything will be kicking off Sunday, July 1st, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come early to get a head-start on learning the game’s rhythms, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and say hello to the people changing the way you think about games!
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