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.
Hey folks! If you don’t already have your Thursday evening cleared off, make sure it’s cleared off now and come join us for Austin Chronicle’s GAME ON showcase — a free three-hour party that will highlight some of the best games coming out of Austin’s indie game scene.
The event is open to everyone and will include nearly 20 games from Austin developers, including The Stanley Parable, SoundSelf, Cosmic DJ, Fantastic Arcade game jam winner Starphonix (below), and the special dance-mat-enhanced version of A͈L͈P͈H͈A͈B͈E͈T͈ (pictured at top), from Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman and Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. (… as well as other Keita-related surprises???)
Never got your chance to be inducted into The Jejune Institute, the amazing real-world game that transformed the city of San Francisco into a magical & mysterious playground? Then it is crucial that you join us at Austin’s North Doornext Thursday, November 7th, at 7:00PM, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents a free screening of The Institute, the newly released documentary that takes “invites viewers down the rabbit hole into a secret underground world teeming just beneath the surface of everyday life.”
Any attempt to describe The Jejune Institute will always fall short of just how fantastic the experience was — from being first led into an intimidating Financial District skyscraper, to being given your first mission & re-emerging into the San Francisco streets to find that the clues had been around you all along, to hiking through the park with a transistor radio to pick up pirate radio broadcasts that you never knew existed & realizing that the plot was thickening by the minute.
But watching The Institute does an amazing job of carrying you along for the ride you might have missed, and introducing you to the game’s creators, participants & key figures, only to discover that behind the curtain — there are only more curtains.
Following its recent screening at the Austin Film Society, JUEGOS RANCHEROS is very excited to be able to present The Institute free of charge and open to the public, so even more of you can fall down its peculiar & enlightening rabbit-hole, in our first ever movie-night.
The presentation will begin promptly at 7:30PM, so please arrive early & in plenty of time to grab a good seat & not interrupt the film!
Doors will be open Thursday, November 7th, 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!
Hey everyone! JUEGOS co-founder Adam Saltsman here. It is with a potent mixture of relief and regret that we post this reminder that we are SKIPPING the regularly scheduled JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup ND during October.
We are all taking a much-needed break after this year’s uber-successful Fantastic Arcade event (seen above), and will be returning with a great JR meetup at the usual time and place at the ND, Thursday, November 7th. We’ll post more details about that in a few weeks!
In the meantime, we are also working on a bunch of administrative and organizational tasks within JR itself that will enable us to do more and better events going forward, and we’ll be posting a bunch of information about that very soon too.
That’s all for now! Have a great October. We’ll have some cool good news and new plans to share very soon!
Come take a sneak peek at this year’s upcoming Fantastic Arcade, at The North Door. We’ll be checking out four special games from the selection: a pitched local multiplayer game, a hometown favorite, a fresh take on a classic genre, and a gorgeously-crafted cosmic headtrip.
The Yawhg is a one- to four-player choose-your-own-adventure game that randomizes a unique story every time you play. The evil Yawhg is returning. How will the town’s locals lead their lives in the meanwhile, and what will they do when the dreaded Yawhg finally arrives? The fate of a community hinges on the characters’ actions, and the decisions of their players.
STARWHAL: Just the Tip is a multiplayer game of floppy mayhem. Use all your space narwhal skills to pierce other players’ hearts while keeping yours safe! A quick review session of this game turned into one of the most heated and fun local multiplayer sessions we have had in a while, and we know that Juegos regulars will love playing this game.
The Banner Saga: Chapter One (Stoic Studio)
The epic single-player campaign mode that fans have been waiting for since last year’s peek at the multiplayer beta, Banner Saga: Chapter One is Role-playing meets turn-based strategy, wrapped into an adventure mini-series about vikings. Created by an Austin studio, Banner Saga is filled with some of the most achingly beautiful art and animation to ever be in a game.
MirrorMoon EP: (Santa Ragione)
This trippy, radically expanded return to Santa Ragione’s short-play game MirrorMoon is as beautiful as it is head-scratchingly compelling in the way its intricate puzzles unfold. We’re hoping that you guys can help us figure out all of its mysteries!
Those games and much more will be kicking off Thursday, Sept 5st, 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!
What better way to play the most beautiful upcoming game about space than in a planetarium? There is no better way, as you’ll find out Thursday, August 1st, at 7:00PM, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents Christoffer Hedborg’s Eleven, inside an actual inflatable planetarium at Austin’s North Door, with soundtrack artist Datahowler performing live.
But it’s Eleven that remains his most exciting upcoming work, an exploration game that presents the sort of outer-space we all secretly dream it could be: an infinite field of gorgeous, abstract, unknowable geometry that’s all ours to explore.
To help us present the game in the best way, we’re partnering with Austin’s upcoming Science Museum & Planetarium to set up their inflatable planetarium inside the venue itself — so players can lie down, stretch out, and let the game unfold all around them — as well as a short presentation by Science Museum & Planetarium executive director Torvald Hessel to talk about bringing the mystery & magic of space to our city.
Even better, we’ll have Dallas electro wizard Datahowler — the musician behind Eleven‘s laid back & chilled out soundtrack — live at the North Door as a super special guest star, to perform selections from the game and more.
That and much more will be kicking off Thursday, August 1st, 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!
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