Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community 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 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 on Venus Patrol for your reference, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

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Originally pitched as a physics-based toy that let you “play with the creatures and artifacts of North American mythology”, Ben Esposito’s Kachina quickly became one of my most anticipated games back in 2012, with its vaguely Katamari-in-reverse mechanics that allowed you to swallow up successively larger objects with a player-controlled hole that grew wider every time something fell in.

After its showing at various festivals throughout 2013, including last year’s HORIZON conference, news about the game went somewhat dark, as Esposito simultaneously continued development on Perfect Stride — the first-person skateboarder he’s creating with LA game collective Arcane Kids — as well as that collective’s numerous side projects like the cult hit Bubsy 3D.

But now, Esposito has just revealed that he is re-imagining Kachina as something new: Donut County, which is set to make its debut at this year’s Fantastic Arcade in Austin, Texas on September 18th.

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After another couple long weekends spent with a few hundred excellent games, the first eight selections of this year’s Fantastic Arcade have just been announced, each of which will be given the full arcade-cabinet overhaul (as above, from last year) and put on public display for all Fantastic Fest & Arcade-goers in Austin, TX from September 18th to 21st.

Once again, the games have been selected by the operators of Austin indie collective JUEGOS RANCHEROS (aka Adam Saltsman, Jo Lammert, Rachel Weil, Wiley Wiggins & yours truly), with some of those games also serving as public tournaments throughout the festival’s five days — full information on each follows below.

Banana Chalice

Developer: Kyle Reimergarten

The next major game from Kyle Reimergarten — creator of Fantastic Arcade 2013 selection (and one of my overall top 2013 games), Fjords — Banana Chalice is a tunnel shooter about cats, bananas and monsters, with all of the off-kilter and lo-fi home-spun charm that by now has become his signature. Reimergarten promises as much mystery and magic out of Chalice as he brought to Fjords, which is to say, a lot.

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[This post is re-blogged from Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our local Austin indie game collective.]

It’s been on our most-wanted lists for ages, and the time is finally here: come join us next Thursday, August 7th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door as we host the local premiere of the super gorgeous exploration game Hohokum.

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

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Organizers of Fantastic Arcade — the indie game offshoot of Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest — are sending out a reminder that there is just under two weeks left to submit your game for this year’s festival, which will take place here in Austin, TX on September 18th-21st.

Once again, the festival will be curated by Austin’s game collective JUEGOS RANCHEROS, and will give the developers the opportunity not just to showcase their game (including some in custom-built arcade cabinets), but give talks in whatever manner they choose: music performances, one-on-one developer chats like this one between Gone Home‘s Steve Gaynor & Tiger Style’s Randy Smith, or more traditional presentations by Sword & Sworcery co-creator Craig Adams.

You can see full video of many of the past years’ talks and performances here on Venus Patrol.

Click here to submit your game to this year’s festival, or check Fantastic Arcade’s website for more information about festivals past.

Missed the livestream of our recent E3-alternative press conference? Look no further than the video above, which will let you watch the 2014 edition of HORIZON in its entirety. Held just a few weeks back at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the latest edition of HORIZON featured debuts and new looks at games by the creators of Windosill, Thirty Flights of Loving, Dear Esther and more.

The breakout hit of the show, certainly, was Mountain, the first true videogame project by animator David OReilly (perhaps best known as the creator of the virtual reality game in Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her, who also recently debuted his Oculus Rift demo here on Venus Patrol).

Just released for iPhone/iPad as well as Windows, Mac & Linux today, you can see OReilly himself introduce the project in the HORIZON highlight video above, before getting the game yourself.

Below the fold I’ll also include the other notable highlight: Brendon Chung of Blendo Games revealing, for the first time, single-player time-manipulating co-op mechanics of his upcoming 20th-century-cyberpunk game Quadrilateral Cowboy.

Visit the official HORIZON site for screenshots, video and more information on all of the games included in this year’s conference!

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[This post is re-blogged from Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our local Austin indie game collective.]

Spaceteam isn’t just one of our favorite mobile games, it’s one of the most enduringly engrossing, and next Thursday, June 5th, at 7:00PM, Austin’s North Door will be host to the first of a set of worldwide tournaments as we present the Spaceteam Admiral’s Challenge.

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

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Ready to give the world of Ed Key & David Kanaga’s Proteus a second visit in an entirely new way?

Venus Patrol is proud to present Purgateus, a Proteus remix by Devine Lu Linvega (aka Aliceffekt) — a strange dream-within-a-dream-world that plays just like Proteus but “feels” entirely new.

Inspired by a tweet by The Floor is Jelly creator Ian Snyder, Devine (best known most recently for Oquonie, the abstract iOS adventure game created in collaboration with illustrator Rekka Bellum) has given Proteus a total aesthetic overhaul with new graphics, sound and an entirely new soundtrack (available for streaming below the fold and for purchase on bandcamp).

As far as I can tell, the chain of events that set off this development were: Proteus creator Ed Key shows a debug screenshot for an OSX patch, which I coined ‘Dark Proteus’ and then doggedly wouldn’t let go of the joke.

Snyder decided to then actually make the joke a reality, which in turn inspired Devine to do some hacking of his own and — his productivity almost unparalleled — days later Purgateus was born.

In fact, Synder & Devine have kicked off what hopefully might be a wave of new Proteus total-overhauls — you can follow along with other attempts via this thread at makega.me, a recently revived & steadfastly inclusive new forum for aspiring & veteran developers.

To enter the world of Purgateus yourself, visit the new dedicated site for the game here on Venus Patrol and enter your name and email to receive the mod. You’ll need to already own a copy of Proteus (which you can purchase on the Purgateus site), but once you do, installation of the mod is as easy as replacing a folder inside the Proteus directory with Devine’s new files.

We hope you enjoy the world of Purgateus! Find Devine Lu Linvega, Proteus creator Ed Key & Venus Patrol on Twitter and let us know what you think!

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[It’s no secret that I count Kentucky Route Zero as one of my favorite videogames of all time, and one of my highest recommendations particularly for people who haven’t dipped their toes in the videogame waters in a while, and so seeing artist Tamas Kemenczy was a top priority at this year’s Game Developers Conference.

His talk (linked below) was a fantastic account of how theater and film staging influenced the game’s visuals & transitions, made doubly valuable by loops of those pieces playing independently as Kemenczy talked. I was particularly entranced by Burton’s face in Equus, as below, which I didn’t recognize, and snapped a quick photo to have him identify it later.

Having then subsequently watched & been blown away by Equus, I asked Kemenczy to ID all the films in his repertoire of influences, which he’s written up in full after the jump, and to which I’ve added streaming/DVD/Blu-ray links, where available. I hope you find it as valuable a resource as I already have!]

I gave a talk this year at GDC about the scenography of Kentucky Route Zero, the theatrical and cinematic influences on the game, and how we go about designing for performance. Some folks asked about the films shown during the talk, so here’s a list of them, but I thought I’d include some that were on the shortlist but didn’t make it onto slides, and some of these were shown in the KRZ talk the year before as well.

(Not included in this list is David Lynch, who we admire and most people are already familiar with.)

Equus (1977)

I really like the long take of Dysart’s (Richard Burton’s) face, totally stressed out about the chaotic moment that brought about Alan’s personal horse-god. There is a literary connection in KRZ to this play, but also the film by Sidney Lumet has dramatic flourishes that we took to heart.

[Available on DVD & Blu-ray.]

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Doing anything particularly romantic between May 24th and June 8th? No? Good, because I’m super happy to announce that Venus Patrol is organizing the first in what I hope becomes a regular series of game jams, this time dedicated to the lonesome future west-world theme: the space cowboy.

The game jam, hosted with the help of itch.io, is open to developers worldwide, and will run for two weeks, after which it will be judged by players for the week following on a variety of to be determined criteria like romance and psychedelia.

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