Hello everyone! With the closing of the Highball until sometime in 2013, we’ll have some big changes coming over the next couple months, so here’s the full run down of what’ll be happening through December and into the new year!

First & foremost, as you might have seen at our last meetup, even though the Highball will temporarily be gone, that doesn’t mean our meetings will end! Instead, we’ll be moving to a new day, and a new venue: specifically, starting on January 3rd, we’ll be relocating to the amazing ND Austin, located at E 5th & Brushy, for regular meetups on the first Thursday of every month.

This means that no longer will you have to drag your tired bones out of bed on the middle of a Sunday afternoon: these will be night-time meetups starting around 7:30PM and running for as long as you’re happy to stay there! If you haven’t already visited ND for a Nerd Nite / Dorkbot meetup or a show, you’re in for a treat: the space not only has a stage, but a massive two-story screen that will be fantastic for projecting games. They also have good drinks, and (speaking from experience!) great tamales and queso at their bar around back. We’re super grateful for the ND for taking us in!

What this also means is that our originally scheduled December 5th meetup will be delayed to January 3rd, BUT! We’ll still be getting together this month as a part of Make Watch Love Austin, an all-night expo and preview of the new space that’s being opened by our friends at the Austin Film Society. The event will be taking place Saturday, December 8th, from 5-9PM, and, as JUEGOS, we’ll be bringing back local-favorite JOHANN SEBASTIAN JOUST to spread the love to Austin’s wider creative community.

Tickets and more information are available from the Austin Film Society event page!

Finally, if you’d like a more direct way to stay on top of what’s happening with JUEGOS than our Twitter / Facebook page / this here site, we’re setting up a new email distribution list with Google Groups. For now, it’ll be ‘announcement-only’ so we can directly contact you about upcoming events, but we’re looking into eventually expanding the list to help solidify and grow Austin’s community of videogame creators and lovers.

If you’d like to join the group, just visit this Google Groups page and click the ‘Join group’ button!

We’ll have even more exciting JUEGOS announcements as we roll into the new year, so stay tuned for those, and looking forward to seeing you all at one of our events soon!

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.

Like our similar self-intro video for PARTY TIME! HEXCELLENT, it’s a bit quiet and a bit jittery, but turn it up & stick with it for a look at the amazing art, concepts and thoughts behind the new mode of the game they revealed for the first time, SLAYERS (more on that here). For more on White Whale & GOD OF BLADES, visit their website here!

Two updates to our announcement of this coming Sunday’s GOD OF BLADES edition meetup: the first, above, is the amazing alternate poster created by our own Dale Austin. We’re incredibly happy with how both turned out, as usual.

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!

As excited as we are for this weekend’s meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS featuring all of the games of NYU Game Center’s NO QUARTER exhibition? Help us spread the word!

Our dedicated flyer-maker extraordinaire Dale Austin has prepared two PDFs of the poster above and its alternate (seen on the last post) for you to distribute however you’d like: print, hand out, email, or hang around Austin at all the places where the cool kids hang out so they know about the show! Download a ZIP of both PDFs by clicking this link here!

Also: since our time will be necessarily sort of limited on Sunday, we’ve got two more PDFs that will let you get an early look at the rules behind Zach Gage’s post-apocalyptic eating-contest card-game, GUTS OF GLORY (download PDF here), and Margaret Robertson’s labyrinth creator DRUNK DUNGEON (download pdf here).

Feel free to show up to the Highball a bit before 4PM on Sunday, if you’d like to get a head-start: we’ll all be there helping to get new players acclimated! See you then!

Attention indies both local and global: this is your two week warning that the deadline for submissions for the 2012 Fantastic Arcade is May 31st, so submit your games now for the third annual festival, taking place here in Austin, TX from September 20th-27th.

Who should submit? With actual converted cabinets and a field of laptops loaded with multiple games & an audience (typically already one or [many] more drinks in) that mills around like a traditional arcade, Fantastic Arcade tends to focus more on shorter-form, highly approachable single- and multi-player games that people can get easily pick up and get attached to, rather than longer-form games that require deeper attention. See the 2011 spotlight and showcase lineups to get a better sense of what that means.

To help entice you to submit, we asked some former Fantastic Arcade attendees to take the time to tell you why you should submit & visit in September, and this is what they had to say:
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Hey Austin game-lovers: missed the SXSW screenings of INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE? We’ve got good news: Blinkworks is bringing back the film for one night only, Wednesday, May 23rd at 6:45pm, to the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse!

Put together with the help of Kickstarter supporters, INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE spent two years documenting the development of Team Meat’s SUPER MEAT BOY & Polytron’s FEZ, alongside a look backward at Jonathan Blow’s work on BRAID, all set to a beautiful soundtrack by Jim Guthrie of SWORD & SWORCERY EP fame.

At least a few of us from the JUEGOS community will be attending, and leading a short Q&A following the film.

Tickets have just gone online at the Drafthouse: pick them up now and join us!

As a coincidental side note, Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack has just officially gone on sale, and is now available in digital form, double LP, and a super limited double-LP + T-shirt package, all designed by JUEGOS superpal Cory Schmitz! Preview the music and pick up any of the packages at Bandcamp!