It’s the first meetup of the New Year, and we’re celebrating it by bringing back two fan favorites from 2011: this Sunday, January 8th, at 4PM, our eighth edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at The Highball will see the return of Die Gute Fabrik’s slow-motion dueling game JOHANN SEBASTIAN JOUST and Messhof’s NIDHOGG (via our prototype indie-game arcade machine, the TEXATRON).

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

First debuted here in Austin all the way back at our second meetup, J.S. JOUST instantly became a local hit, as we saw again last month at its return for the Venus Patrol party. If you’ve still not had the chance to play, you’ll definitely want be there this Sunday to experience how it transforms any group of friends & strangers into a slow-motion dancing, dueling swirl.

We’ll also be bringing back our in-progress version of the indie arcade machine TEXATRON to project on the big screen, which we understand essentially means another few hours devoted to Messhof’s crowd-pleasing low-res masterpiece NIDHOGG.

Both games are still basically unavailable to play elsewhere, so this will be your only chance to see why they’re so well-loved, worldwide!

Everything will be kicking off Sunday, January 8th, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come hang out, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and say hello to the people changing the way you think about games!

What better way to celebrate the super-successful funding of a Kickstarter campaign than with a party? For a special seventh edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at the Highball, this Saturday, December 10th, from 4PM-8PM, join us as we bring together the games, music, art & people behind the upcoming launch of videogame culture site VENUS PATROL, with a live performance from Disasterpeace, the composer behind Polytron’s highly anticipated indie game FEZ.

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

Be sure to arrive before 7PM, when Disasterpeace will kick off his performance, including special arrangements of his songs for FEZ. As you can hear below, his compositions are already promising to be one of the best soundtracks to come from indie games, and, as above, they’re a special treat experienced live.

From 5PM, we’ll also harken back to an earlier edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS with the re-appearance of the latest version of JOHANN SEBASTIAN JOUST, Die Gute Fabrik’s fascinating & dramatic slow-motion dueling game we debuted in June, now enhanced with a number of new bonus features that we’ll be revealing to the people of Austin for the first time.

Attendees will also be among the first people in the world to play the games being created exclusively for VENUS PATROL’s Kickstarter campaign, including GUN GODZ, a “polytheistic, hiphop action first-person shooter” from Dutch indies Vlambeer (SUPER CRATE BOX, RADICAL FISHING), CAPSULE, a unique deep space adventure from Adam Saltsman (CANABALT, Flixel), and an early look at a new game from SWORD & SWORCERY EP creator Superbrothers.

We’ll also give Highball attendees the first chance to hear the songs from the Moon Grotto 7″ — a collection of original & remixed songs from Superbrothers’ SWORD & SWORCERY EP by composer & remix artist SCNTFC — and will have with us a few handfuls of 1″ buttons, VENUS PATROL T-shirts from designer Mikko Walamies (freshly printed by Austin’s Bearded Lady) and other fun stuff.

Basically, it’ll be four hours of low-key but high-awesome hanging out with drinks, games, music and friends and we super hope to see you there.

Everything will be kicking off Saturday, December 10th, at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come hang out, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and say hello to the people changing the way you think about games!

[*PS: Hey everyone! As usual, bring your 3DS again! We’re doing awesome with these StreetPasses!]

It seems like only four weeks ago that JUEGOS RANCHEROS graced the pages of the Austin Chronicle (oh, it was? oh, we were named part of 2011’s Best of Austin?), but now we’re back!

Grab a copy of the Chronicle between now and next Thursday, flip to page 44, and there we are: five whole column width’s worth of Wiley & Adam & I talking about the birth and future of the collective.

Or, you can just click here and get the full skinny (and the full color version of our goofy mugs) right now:

Even as attendance grows each month, Juegos’ goals are loftier than just regular drinks with kindred spirits. “We’ve been able to get people from big studios and people from tiny studios sitting down together eating burritos and talking about stuff, and that just seems good in the long term,” says Saltsman. “I don’t know if we’ve been able to get as many non-video-game people to come as we’d hoped initially, but we’re still working on that.”

One particularly successful meeting included playing an as-yet-unreleased game called Johann Sebastian Joust that isn’t technically a video game since no screen is necessary to play. The game is simple: Grab your motion-sensing controller, pull the trigger to signify that you are ready to play, and keep your “jousting” hand from moving too quickly or you’ll be out. Of course you will be encouraging your opponents to jostle their controllers and get eliminated. “Joust is kind of the poster child for introducing people to indie games,” Wiggins says to explain its allure. “You can see the whole game right there physically, and it immediately makes sense.” As Juegos attendees played, Joust managed to entice the tastemaking and often difficult-to-impress waitstaff at the HighBall, who were soon lining up to show their skills. Getting Austin to rethink the definition of a video game is step one in an ongoing attempt to encourage the local nongaming population to consider interactive media as something within their artistic purview.

Thanks to James Renovitch and the Chronicle for paying attention, and for helping to get the word out to hopefully at least a handful more people that haven’t yet made it out!

The next meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be at the Highball Saturday, December 10th before returning to its regular Sunday service. Mark your calendars now!

Hey all — just a quick update that because of a charity event happening at the Highball on the first Sunday of December, we’ve moved the next JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup to take place on SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10th.

More details and time-slot information will be coming soon, but mark your calendars now! We think this one’s going to be pretty rad.

After a brief Fantastic Arcade hiatus, we’re returning once again to our regular Fistful of Indies series — with the latest selection of indie games both local and global worth paying attention to released over the prior month — and this time we’ve again put together a list that rings in at several hundred games, presented at our sixth event.

Fully annotated for your pleasure, for the convenience of both event-goers and — hopefully — the wider world of indie game enthusiasts, here’s the list for November 2011:

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What’s so indie about the highly-anticipated PlayStation 3 shooter STARHAWK? Find out this Sunday, November 6th, at 4PM at our sixth edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at the Highball, as the team designing the game at our own Austin-local LightBox Interactive show off their personal side-projects, and explain how working on abstract indie games ends up influencing big-budget AAA designs.

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

In attendance at this month’s JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be STARHAWK lead designer Josh Sutphin with his games FAIL-DEADLY and CORTEX, designer Matthew Gallant with his one-button underwater battler PAX BRITANNICA, and designer Trent Polack with his collection of abstract indie games including IN THE WIND, ASPLODE! and BROKEN.

In addition to simply showing off their work, the team will touch on the development of STARHAWK, specifically how indie development and philosophies themselves can be integrated into a bigger commercial design, and the importance of drawing design influences from a wider variety of media and experiences, followed by public play of all the games brought to the show!

There will also be cake.

Everything will be kicking off Sunday, November 6th, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come hang out, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and say hello to the people changing the way you think about games!

[*PS: Hey everyone! As usual, bring your 3DS again! We’re doing awesome with these StreetPasses!]