Greetings from the West Texas high desert town of Marfa, where for the third year JUEGOS RANCHEROS has presented a selection of games at the Marfa Film Festival!

As you’ve probably seen by now, we brought out a number of games from our recent Mystic Western Game Jam (which saw nearly 50 games entered from developers all around the world), which we’ve installed here in the old Chamber of Commerce office suite at the historic Paisano Hotel.

The @JUEGOSRANCHEROS #mysticwestern arcade is open in Marfa, Texas, and it's beautiful.
💕💕💕💕 pic.twitter.com/xlSlZtcNiz

— cathode • rae (@partytimeHXLNT) July 14, 2016

We’ll be set up here through the end of the festival on Sunday, but if you weren’t able to make it out, we’ve got good news: we’ll be bringing our selections back home to Austin for a special exhibition in our indie arcade space, the Museum of Human Amusement, next Friday, July 22nd.

We’ll have all the game stations we brought out west available, alongside drinks and other music performances and projections starting at 8PM and going until everyone’s had their fill.

[Special thanks also to our new friends at Big Bend Brewing — our actual favorite West Texas beer — for providing the drinks for our Austin show!]

Below the fold, we’ve included the mini-poster we’ve papered Marfa with, which we’ll also have for sale at the event (special thanks to G.P. Lackey for his amazing poster art & animation at top), as well as a list of some of the Mystic Western Game Jam games we’re rotating through our multi-selector.

The Mystic Western exhibition will be held next Friday, July 22 at 8:00 PM, at Museum of Human Achievement, Austin, TX. The event is open to all ages, with donations warmly accepted.

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Hey developers! This is your annual warning that submissions for Fantastic Arcade 2016 will be closing in just two short weeks. If you would like your game to be considered for the festival, please click here to submit it before July 13th, at 11:59 PM Central Time.

We’ve added a countdown timer on our main page so you can keep track of when that is for you, but please don’t wait until the last minute and risk missing the deadline!

[ CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR GAME! ]

This year’s Fantastic Arcade will take place at Austin’s South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse & Highball lounge, from September 26th through the 29th, during the second week of the Fantastic Fest film festival.

After the July 13th deadline, the JUEGOS RANCHEROS board will begin the selection process to determine which games from among your submissions will be showcased during Fantastic Arcade. All of the games selected will be accessible to both festival attendees and the general public, for free, in a casual atmosphere of camaraderie and love for games.

We look forward to playing all of your submissions, and especially to seeing you all in September for this year’s Arcade!

Ready to fulfill your lifelong dream of playing music on rainbow-colored hot dogs, gummi bears & jelly beans? Then be absolutely sure to join us Thursday, July 7th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents Playthings, the debut virtual reality game from New York’s Always & Forever Computer Entertainment.

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

Always & Forever calls Playthings “a VR music playground set on an island filled with cheeseburger drums and other junk-food instruments”, where where your room transforms into “a rhythm game where you fend off a musical onslaught of candy.”

The game is the creation of George Michael Brower, formerly of Google’s Creative Lab, and who you might also recognize as one-half of similarly sweet musical duo George & Jonathan, most famous for creating an entire interactive website for their final album (go play with that immediately if you haven’t already).

A video posted by always & forever (@aaf.nyc) on Jun 4, 2016 at 8:30am PDT

With sound design assistance from Jon Baken (aka the Jonathan half of George & Jonathan) and Anamanaguchi‘s Peter Berkman, alongside Brower’s own brilliant production (which you can hear for yourself in the video above), Playthings has become one of our top virtual reality places, which we think you’re going to love being in just as much.

Playthings will be playable Thursday, July 7th, 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!

Ready for another inspiring night of contemplative & beautiful games? Then be sure to join us next Thursday, June 2nd, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents the work of Klondike, France’s staggeringly talented independent game collective.

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

You may have caught a few games made by Klondike members at various prior Fantastic Arcades — or even all the way back to our first Marfa Film Festival installation — but we’ve never had an entire night devoted to the group’s collected work, until now.

Collectively hailing from various points around France, the ten-strong group of developers (some of whom gave an overview of the collective’s formation at a 2015 Fantastic Arcade talk you can watch in its entirety here) has established itself as an incredibly prolific powerhouse of understated games with bold & beautiful aesthetics — as evidenced by even a cursory glance at their website.

For our special “Introducing: Klondike” show, we’ll be bringing along a wide selection of games from all the diverse members of the group, including Orchids to Dusk (the video above), from member Pol Clarissou, Titouan Millet’s brilliantly opaque and mysterious Mu Cartographer (the screenshot above), and much, much more.

good place to chill 🌿☀🌷📙 pic.twitter.com/YCbEzfLWDO

— Muffin (◕ฺー≦)ノ (@dzifyr) April 4, 2016

Our selection of Klondike games will be playable Thursday, June 2nd, 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!

Love bizarre, colorful, playful games like Katamari Damacy, Hohokum and Donut County? Then you will definitely want to join us this Thursday, May 5th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents the work of Sokpop, one of our new favorite independent game collectives.

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

Collectively hailing from the Netherlands, and made up of members Tom van den Boogart, Aran Koning, Tijmen Tio & Rubna, the new supergroup has quickly established itself one of the most reliably creative forces working in games, alongside groups like KO_OP Mode, Arcane Kids and Klondike.

For our special “Introducing: Sokpop” show, we’ll be bringing along a wide selection of games from all of the members of the group, including Digital Bird Playground, Koning’s On The Hunt, rubna’s Noodle Ramen, and much more.

Here's my #LDJAM entry:https://t.co/BbRudFKTu7 pic.twitter.com/zEGYgvWqsV

— Diamond Tio (@TijmenTio) April 18, 2016

Our selection of Sokpop games will be playable Thursday, May 5th, 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!

Always wanted to become a tennis pro without the hassle of finding a partner to play against? Then join us this Thursday, April 7th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents VRUnicorn’s virtual-reality solo-tennis simulator, #SelfieTennis.

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

Freshly announced as the first VR game published by Austin’s own Devolver Digital, #SelfieTennis more or less instantly became one of our favorite things to do with the Vive.

It’s the Wii Sports/Mario Tennis virtual reality needed: a super colorful, super simple & super accessible sports game, where the catch is that you’re always playing against yourself.

Lob a ball across the net & you’re instantly transported to the opposite side of the court, where you can return your own serve and keep the ball in play as long as you can, or simply give in to your own frustration and find your own fun by pinging your ball against the heads of the court’s deliriously cheerful on-lookers.

Devolver will be providing some of the night’s best players with keys for the game (which is currently on sale on Steam!) so you can continue your quest for mastery back home. With some luck, we may even have a quick hello from one of the VRUnicorns themselves, and ample opportunities to tweet out a gif of yourself playing via the newly-added in-game selfie stick.

♥♥♥❤❤❤ #SelfieTennis ❤❤❤♥♥♥ pic.twitter.com/oJuQayOnAF

— Julie Heyde (@JulieHeyde) April 1, 2016

#SelfieTennis will be playable Thursday, April 7th, 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!