Want to try some of the best new local-multiplayer games designed entirely around public play? Then be sure to join us Thursday, November 3rd, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents the local debut of the games of NYU Game Center’s Seventh Annual No Quarter Exhibition.

[ RSVP FOR THIS EVENT AND INVITE YOUR FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK BY CLICKING HERE! ]

Even if you haven’t heard of No Quarter before, you’ve almost definitely heard of some of the games that were commissioned for the exhibition.

Messhof’s Nidhogg, Ramiro Corbetta’s Hokra (now part of Die Gute Fabrik’s Sportsfriends), Bennett Foddy’s Speed Chess and Nikita Mikros & Joshua DeBonis’s Killer Queen are just a few of the games that have been developed for the annual show and have gone on to renown elsewhere, including several exhibited here at previous JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetups.

Robert Yang, No Quarter curator & himself a local favorite developer, describes the tone of the show and the games it exhibits simply as “games for the public”, where “a public game treats play as a freely available public good that everyone deserves, like air and water,” and creates an atmosphere where players “feel included, and train players to care about each other.”

In light of that, this year he’s commissioned four such games from four fantastic developers: Blendo Games‘ Brendon Chung, creator of games including Thirty Flights of Loving, Gravity Bone and Quadrilateral Cowboy, product designer & game maker Catt Small, Matheson Marcault‘s Holly Gramazio, a renowned designer of games for events, parks, museums and public spaces, and Stephen Lawrence Clark, whose Rooftop Cop was selected for two IGF Nominations.

Because the actual exhibition has yet to begin and the games themselves have yet to be publicly revealed, we can’t yet describe exactly what you’ll be playing at the show, so suffice it to say that we’ll be bringing a selection of these games to the North Door for their first exhibition outside No Quarter itself.

We’ll update this post (and its accompanying Facebook event) with more details of the games as they are revealed, but otherwise, we’ll have them waiting for you Thursday, November 3rd, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702. The show is free, all ages, and open to all the public, so come join us as we drink, play and meet the people changing the way we think about games!

[No Quarter poster illustration at top by Arlin Ortiz!!]

We survived another Fantastic Arcade! And after a long weekend recovering, we’re here with archived video of nearly all the talks, tournaments, and other presentations given throughout the week of our seventh-annual festival.

All week long we’ll be presenting a day-by-day breakdown of all of the videos (find day one here, day two here, and day three here), today with last Thursday’s talks. Below the fold you’ll find full video covering DIARIES OF A SPACEPORT JANITOR, THE NORWOOD SUITE, and LITTLE BUG.

You’ll also find the creators of PROTEUS showing off their new games: THE FOREST OF SLEEP, and an absolutely unmissable presentation of OIK OS BOOK I, destined to go down in legend as one of the top Fantastic Arcade talks.

You’ll also find a brief history of FMV games, culminating in the creation of a brand new FMV game filmed right here at Fantastic Fest! And finally, our head-to-head MULTIBOWL championship showdown & our post-Arcade awards ceremony!

Like our videos and want to support Fantastic Arcade & JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Buy our bundle of new games from the creators of DOWNWELL & KATAMARI DAMACY! All proceeds go toward our efforts to commission new amazing games & bring what we do to you!

(more…)

We survived another Fantastic Arcade! And after a long weekend recovering, we’re here with archived video of nearly all the talks, tournaments, and other presentations given throughout the week of our seventh-annual festival.

All week long we’ll be presenting a day-by-day breakdown of all of the videos (find day one here and day two here), today with last Wednesday’s talks. Below the fold you’ll find full video covering the creation of games on “weird hardware”, an amazing exhibition of the “haunted” Nintendo Entertainment System, and sci-fi drone sim DUSKERS.

You’ll also see Nathalie Lawhead create an entire new game — live! — and go in-depth with DOWNWELL creator Moppin, before the world’s first (?) head-to-head DOWNWELL tournament, capped off with our second-annual ARENA GODS tournament!

Like our videos and want to support Fantastic Arcade & JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Buy our bundle of new games from the creators of DOWNWELL & KATAMARI DAMACY! All proceeds go toward our efforts to commission new amazing games & bring what we do to you!

(more…)

We survived another Fantastic Arcade! And after a long weekend recovering, we’re here with archived video of nearly all the talks, tournaments, and other presentations given throughout the week of our seventh-annual festival.

All week long we’ll be presenting a day-by-day breakdown of all of the videos, starting today with last Monday’s talks. Below the fold you’ll find full video covering HIDDEN FOLKS, Dutch indie collective Sokpop, BURRITO GALAXY 65 and WEST OF LOATHING.

You’ll also find our preliminary tournament of MULTIBOWL, the rapid-fire head-to-head trip back through arcade and console history!

Like our videos and want to support Fantastic Arcade & JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Buy our bundle of new games from the creators of DOWNWELL & KATAMARI DAMACY! All proceeds go toward our efforts to commission new amazing games & bring what we do to you!

(more…)

You’re invited to join us this Friday at 7:00 PM at the Museum of Human Achievement for the unofficial Fantastic Arcade afterparty, as we celebrate the work of arcade of anything Fall 2016 resident artist Robby Kraft.

[ RSVP FOR THIS EVENT AND INVITE YOUR FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK BY CLICKING HERE! ]

Robby Kraft (NYC) is perhaps best known for his work in origami. His breathtaking and organic forms, created from the careful folding of paper, have been exhibited internationally.

During his monthlong arcade of anything residency, Kraft has applied his interests in geometry, scale, and play to the world of virtual reality. Shifting Sand Lands is an experimental sandbox rendered simultaneously in virtual and physical worlds. In advance of the opening, you can keep tabs on the development of Shifting Sand Lands on Kraft’s arcade of anything devlog.

For opening night, Kraft will be joined by Nathan Ober and his work The Observer or the Observed?, a sound installation inspired by astrophysics, microtonal sound, and Buddhist thought. We’ll also have refreshments, our world-famous Fantastic Arcade cabinets set up for free play, and a special musical guest that you won’t want to miss.

The arcade of anything event kicks off at 7:00 PM at the Museum of Human Achievement in Austin, TX. Admission is free, but donations–which help fund this and other JUEGOS RANCHEROS programming–are warmly accepted.

[Created in partnership with the Museum of Human Achievement, the arcade of anything artist residency encourages its participants to push into experimental and unexplored territory within digital arts. More information on our residency program can be found here.]

Want to bring this year’s Fantastic Arcade home to you? We’ve got the perfect way! We’ve just launched a bundle of five amazing and exclusive games making their debut at our seventh-annual indie game festival, Fantastic Arcade.

[ CLICK HERE OR USE THE WIDGET BELOW TO BUY THE 2016 FANTASTIC ARCADE BUNDLE AND SUPPORT JUEGOS RANCHEROS! ]

Thanks to our distribution partner itch.io, all proceeds from the sale of this bundle benefit our non-profit organization. Help us showcase more amazing games both here in Austin and a city near you, and commission more fantastic developers to create new games like these!

Included in this bundle are all five games you see here, along with extras & bonus materials! Here is what you’ll get:

NIUM, by Moppin & Nemk

DOWNWELL creator Moppin has partnered with Nemk (one of our favorite artists working in games) to present NIUM: a post-apocalyptic action game where players will crawl through a ruined, abandoned, STALKER-esque exclusion zone inhabited only by a variety of mutated wildlife. (Windows, Mac)

ALPHABET, by Keita Takahashi & Adam Saltsman

Originally available only to select Kickstarter backers, ALPHABET is a slapstick marathon footrace for 1- to 26-players from Keita Takahashi (renowned creator of KATAMARI DAMACY & NOBY NOBY BOY) and Adam Saltsman (designer behind CANABALT & OVERLAND). Run, jump, eat, sing, poop, and sleep through silly obstacle courses!
(Windows, Mac, Linux)

INSPECTOR WOOF, by Klondike

From Klondike — France’s upstart super-collective of indie game stars — INSPECTOR WOOF & THE VEGETABLE HIGH SCHOOL is a procedurally generated mystery adventure game where every student is hiding terrible secrets. Armed only with your freshly-printed hints sheet, dig deep into their guilty consciences and expose the truth! (Windows, Mac, Linux)

F2OGGY, by Nathalie Lawhead

F2OGGY (Only one survives!) is a Brute-Force Frog-Combat Simulator, by the IGF-winning creator Nathalie Lawhead, made for a growing audience of competitive frogfans. Each player is divided into a faction (a Frog-Faction), and must defeat their opponent using High-Velocity Amphibian Impact Lunges. (Windows, Mac)

LASSOS, by SOKPOP

From SOKPOP — the the Dutch collective behind indie cult classics like the low-fi sci-fi exploration game BERNBAND — comes LASSOS, a game fit for its Texas debut: throw lassos, get money! (Windows, Mac)