Looking for a tax-deductible way to get your name out to Austin’s community of independent games makers and fans? Opportunities are now available!

Following JUEGOS RANCHEROS’ transition into a 501(c)(3) non-profit, we have just made sponsorship packages available for both our regular monthly events, as well as our yearly flagship festival, Fantastic Arcade.

To learn more about our sponsorship levels, you can visit our new sponsorship section, or click here for a PDF version of the same.

Just want to make a tax-deductible donation at a lower level? We can now easily accommodate that as well: click here to donate directly to JUEGOS RANCHEROS via PayPal, or use the new donate button on the sidebar!

Your donations help JUEGOS RANCHEROS grow our events and our audience in Austin, help us construct our line of arcade cabinets with brand new games, and bring amazing artists and developers from around the world right here to Austin.

If you have any questions about any of our opportunities, don’t hesitate to get in touch by email at juegosrancheros@gmail.com and we’ll be in touch to talk more!

As you may have seen by now, we have just announced our plans for this year’s Fantastic Arcade — the yearly games festival we curate and organize at the Alamo Drafthouse alongside the theater’s renowned genre film fest, Fantastic Fest.

Most excitingly, as we did last year, JUEGOS RANCHEROS has commissioned brand new games which will premiere at the festival, from some of our favorite devs, many of whom will be familiar to attendees of our recent meetups (this was our secret orientation plan!).

This year’s cabinets will include new games from: Ojiro ‘Moppin‘ Fumoto, creator of Downwell (above left), together with his frequent collaborator Momo ‘nemk‘ Murakami (who created the Downwell illustration at top), as well as Nathalie Lawhead, a new festival mainstay behind the Tetrageddon Games series (above right), which took home the Nuovo Award at the 2015 Independent Games Festival.

We’ll also have a new game from Netherlands collective Sokpop, made up of the devs behind games like the incredible low-fi sci-fi exploration game Bernband (above left), as well as Klondike, the French indie supergroup whose members include the devs of games like Mu Cartographer and the KO_OP-published Orchids to Dusk (above right).

In addition to that, we’ll also be constructing a brand new cabinet for ALPHABET (above), the game co-created by Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy designer Keita Takahashi and JUEGOS RANCHEROS co-founder Adam Saltsman. The game was previously only available to Kickstarter backers, and is now being given a wider exhibition for all Fantastic Fest and Fantastic Arcade attendees.

Below the fold is the first press release for the upcoming 2016 Arcade with more information on our arcade cabinets and the first ten games we’ve chosen as our Spotlight selections.

I’ve taken the liberty of adding a number of links, images and videos to all the games detailed below for better context — scroll to the bottom to take a longer look! All of us here are looking forward to seeing you all at this year’s Arcade!

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Over the past 14 days, some of our favorite developers and friends alike have risen to the challenge, and now the results are available: there are now 50 some odd games created for our Mystic Western Game Jam, ready for you to play.

There are plenty of familiar faces, old Fantastic Arcade featured developers, as well as more than a few amazing newcomers that have contributed, so clear away your weekend plans now and visit the Mystic Western page on itch.io to start perusing and downloading.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be collecting our favorite games together & preparing to bring them out to the real-actual mystical West Texas desert for the Marfa Film Festival. There, they’ll be exhibited at the historic Hotel Paisano, located at 207 N Highland Street, right there in that last set of three windows on the far right of the circa-1930s postcard below.

After the Film Festival, they’ll also be part of our next exhibition at The Museum of Human Amusement here in Austin — we’ll have more details on that in the coming weeks.

Our biggest thanks to all of the developers who took part in the jam — we hope you had as much fun creating the games as we’ll have showing them to the wider world!

Hey developers: ready to join us again this year for another round of Fantastic Arcade? You now have until July 13th to submit your game for consideration as one of this year’s showcase games!

[ CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR GAME FOR FANTASTIC ARCADE 2016! ]

The 2016 edition of Fantastic Arcade will once again be taking 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.

Shortly 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.

If you’d like to submit a game, you can do so now by accessing this form before July 13th. We look forward to playing all of your submissions, and especially to seeing you all in September for this year’s Arcade!

Better late than never, we’ve just released video of nearly every session that took place at this year’s Fantastic Arcade for your at-home perusal. Included in the full playlist above are nearly 30 sessions by developers including Double Fine and Arcane Kids, and our usual selection of amazing tournaments like ROCKET LEAGUE and VIDEOBALL.

[NOTE: a few of our live-streamed videos — including our N++ tournament and Wheels of Aurelia developer commentary — have been automatically muted & otherwise blocked by both Twitch & YouTube Content ID systems. We’re working to restore as much of these sessions as we’re able to & host them where we can, as we have with Sam Barlow’s Her Story session below!]

You can find a direct link to the entire playlist here, which will also be mirrored at Fantastic Arcade’s official YouTube account, where you can also find more videos from Fantastic Arcades past.

Once you’ve made your way through them all, you can also find an extensive archive of Fantastic Arcade 2014 videos here, including official Nidhogg, Gang Beasts, Towerfall & Nuclear Throne tournaments, as well as sessions on Grim Fandango, Donut County & more!

Austin indie & experimental game lovers rejoice: JUEGOS RANCHEROS is proud to present the opening of The Museum of Human Amusement, an arcade space we’ve built from scratch, debuting Saturday, November 14th at 11am at 3600 Lyons Rd, as part of the East Austin Studio Tours!

The Museum of Human Amusement is was created in partnership with Austin’s esteemed art & event space The Museum of Human Achievement, and spearheaded by our own Rachel ‘Party Time! Hexcellent!‘ Weil.

For its EAST debut, the space will be in operation November 14th & 15th from 11am-6pm, and again November 21st & 22nd at the same time.

The extended JUEGOS family has spent nights & weekends over the past few weeks finishing out the space from inauspicious warehouse beginnings into something pretty special, so we hope you’ll all join us there throughout November!

What will you be able to find there? For starters, the arcade will be home to all of the mini arcade cabinets we debuted at Fantastic Arcade, which you can see more details of here.

The space will also include its own concession stand, selling T-shirts, buttons, stickers & more from both JUEGOS RANCHEROS and a number of associated developers & artists from around Austin.

Below you can find a few more progress shots as we built the arcade. There’s still a ton to do before Saturday, but come celebrate the opening Saturday, November 14th from 11am to 6pm at 3600 Lyons Rd, Austin TX — just steps away from Blue Genie Art Industries & Sa-Ten Coffee.

After EAST has drawn to a close, we’ll still have the space available for future events — keep checking back here to see what we’re doing with the space next!