It was one of the first best surprises and then a central fixture of the past two Fantastic Arcades, and now we’re bringing it back to debut a night of never-before-seen new scenes & music: join us next Thursday, March 6th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga’s interactive musical landscape generator Panoramical.

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

As Ramallo & Kanaga (the latter also known for his musical contributions to Proteus & Dyad) ready the game for commercial release on PC, Mac & tablet devices — which will also feature a number of audio & visual collaborations with a host of exciting artists — we’ll be giving Austin a chance to experience just-added scenes from the game on the ND’s massive screen, all under the control of the bespoke knob & slider controller made by Mickey ‘Delptronics‘ Delp first debuted in last year’s Fantastic Arcade cabinet.

Doors will be open Thursday, March 6th, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702! The show is free and open to all the public — including guests of the Bang Pop! Music & Interactive Festival happening at the ND that day — come drink, play, and meet the people changing the way you think about videogames!

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here for your reference, each fully annotated & linked up for your pleasure.

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The original was one of the first best games released on the App Store, and now we’re giving Austin the first look at its return: join us next Thursday, February 6th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents an evening with local indie studio Tiger Style, as they pull back the curtain on their forthcoming game Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon.

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

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor was noteworthy for bringing the iPhone a game that wasn’t simply a light time-killer. Peek just one layer beneath its friendly, approachable web-slinging mechanics, and it revealed an involved story of the former inhabitants of the manor, told entirely through the objects they left behind.

And Tiger Style carried that approach one step further with their iPhone & iPad follow-up Waking Mars, a game crafted to bring more mature, console-quality-type mechanics and storytelling to pocket-sized devices.

Now they’re revisiting the world that put them on the map with Rite of the Shrouded Moon, a game that promises to bring back everything you loved about the original Spider, but with a massively expanded and richer world containing even more mysteries and magic.

Like their earlier JUEGOS RANCHEROS debut, Tiger Style will be taking you on a guided tour through the development of Shrouded Moon, and tell you more about what they’re trying to accomplish with its return, the research into secret societies & symbols that’s inspired it, and what you can expect when the game launches later this year.

As usual, the meetup will be immediately followed by our pals at Texas-area chiptune showcase TX Chip — visit their page for this month’s full lineup of 8-bit wunderkind!

Doors will be open Thursday, February 6th, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702! The show is free and open to all the public — come drink, play, and meet the people changing the way you think about videogames!

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here for your reference, each fully annotated & linked up for your pleasure.

(more…)

As the holiday season winds down, we want to help ring in the new year with a bang (& a slice), so join us next Thursday, January 2nd, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents a selection of multiplayer games, headlined by Teknopants‘ just-released instant-classic Samurai Gunn.

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

Samurai Gunn made a strong debut right here in Austin during 2012’s Fantastic Arcade, which first propelled it into the public eye. Now fantastically polished, further expanded, and given one of 2013’s best game soundtracks by underground hip-hop legend Doseone, we’ll be presenting this “lightning-fast Bushido brawler” on the big screen for a low-key but high-action multiplayer night.

We’ll have an additional lineup to-be-announced multiplayer games on hand as well — possibly along with a few prizes for the best samurai in town — so be sure to bone up on your sword/gunn-play over the next week & join us in making the new year memorable, straight off the bat.

Everything will be kicking off Thursday, January 2nd, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702! The show is free and open to all the public — come drink, play, and meet the people changing the way you think about videogames!

As you’ve by now probably heard, JUEGOS RANCHEROS is now an Austin Creative Alliance sponsored group, meaning that we can now accept cash & in-kind donations via ACA that are tax-deductible for you.

And while we haven’t yet pulled together anything as formal as the membership drive currently being put together by our friends at Babycastles, all of our internal discussions keep coming back to one thing: all we want for Xmas is one Windows laptop.

As Adam mentioned in his post, every public event we put on results in a mad scramble to beg/borrow/steal hardware from friends & family for you to play games on, and having the freedom to know that we had official, reliable JUEGOS hardware would be an unbelievable first step for us.

We don’t exactly have a dream machine, but something along the lines of this Lenovo laptop is a good start — quad-core, pretty future-proof & able to handle whatever we throw at it.

That’s a big “ask” though, but we also know that local studios frequently upgrade their own desktop/laptop hardware at the end of the year, and would like to remind everyone that you can get an additional tax writeoff by giving JUEGOS your last-year’s models — everything helps!

We’re also always in need of additional hardware like wired Xbox 360 controllers for Windows, 25″+ HDMI widescreen monitors, non-powered 4-8 port USB hubs & USB extension cables, over-the-ear headphones, wired mice, powerstrips & more!

If you or someone you know might be able to help us reach our goal of a single, nice, reliable Windows laptop by the end of the year — or any other donations that can help us better serve Austin’s indie community! — please let us know by emailing juegosrancheros@gmail.com & we can help guide you through the donation process!