I should probably slow down a bit with the Big Announcements, but there’s just too much to get through before everything explodes next week, so here’s One More Big One: in addition to the debut of Tenya Wanya Teens, our March 27th GDC party will also see the release of a new T-shirt designed by Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi.

The ‘Videogame Romantics’ shirt, inspired by Takahashi’s speech featured on Venus Patrol a few months back, will be released at the party in the ‘Sunset’ colorway pictured above, in a very limited edition that will be exclusive to that one night.

Following the party, the shirt will be the first item available worldwide on the Venus Patrol Shop — long teased in that top bar, but now actually coming soon in partnership with our superpals at Fangamer — in two new colorways, and probably even more colorways after those sell through, and then, hopefully, branching out into many more new designs after this.

Until then, if you want to fly your fellow Videogame Romantic freak flag in those colors above, I would suggest literally like bee-lining to the Fangamer booth at our party on March 27th as soon as possible, because I honestly don’t think they’re going to last long.

You’ve no doubt spotted our various teasers for the game across the web, but with just a week until its debut at our upcoming GDC party, it’s time to pull back the curtain just a bit more: introducing Tenya Wanya Teens, a co-production of Venus Patrol, Wild Rumpus, and Uvula, the husband & wife indie team of Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi & former Namco composer Asuka Sakai.

What is Tenya Wanya Teens? It’s “a coming-of-age tale about love, hygiene, monsters and finding discarded erotic magazines in the woods”. It’s a game about trying desperately to not say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time — that universal struggle to maintain the façade of normality during the awkward transition from child- to adulthood.

But, more than anything, really, it’s a silly party game for two players armed with sixteen buttons each, as demonstrated on prototype box-file controllers by Wild Rumpus’s Marie Foulston & Dick Hogg above, as we put the final touches on the real deluxe custom joysticks that will make their debut alongside the game.

In addition to its appearance at the party, Tenya Wanya Teens will also be part of the lineup at GDC’s Experimental Gameplay Sessions on Friday, so stop by there if you aren’t able to see it earlier in the week.

After that? Stay tuned for news about release to the wider world: we’re already thinking about how we can bring the game to your home, even granted its poly-button insanity — we’ll have more about that in the future both here and at the official Tenya Wanya Teens website & twitter account.

With just two weeks to go until the full Game Developers Conference madness officially kicks in, Wild Rumpus & Venus Patrol have just released the first wave of lineup announcements for our 2013 party, with both some familiar faces and some brand new additions.

Sound Shapes co-creator & star I Am Robot And Proud will be performing a live set including his own brand-new reactive visuals (get a little sneak peek of that here), and Super Hexagon‘s own Chipzel (above) will be part of a lineup that also includes Dyad/Proteus musician David Kanaga, and Gun Godz & Luftrausers‘ Kozilek.

Also returning will be Anticon superstar Dose One, now with his Themselves, 13&God & Subtle bandmate Jel (see why he’s the “MPC emperor” in the video above). After the performances, Fez‘s Phil Fish & former Uncharted designer Rich Lemarchand will be playing out the night with their usual fantastic dance set as Phillipe Lemarchand.

On the games side, not only will we be debuting the previously mentioned new game from Keita Takahashi (which we are now also teasing as a game about “love, hygiene, monsters, and finding discarded erotic magazines in the woods”), but showcasing Super Space ____, the ever-amazing Samurai Gunn, and a new mashed-up version of Panoramical & SoundSelf (above), the latter just announced from Capsule & Antichamber sound artist Robin Arnott.

If you’ll be around the Bay Area on March 27th & haven’t yet purchased tickets, we’ve just opened up another round which can be purchased by clicking right over here. We’ll have more info coming soon as the date draws even more dangerously near!

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

LittleBigPlanet and the upcoming Tearaway are among the most creative & beautiful games to land on the PlayStation platform, and their creators, Media Molecule, will be right here in Austin Thursday, March 7th, at 7:00PM at the North Door.

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

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I’m only slightly late in recommending that everyone in the Toronto area investigate the goings-on at the weekend-long Vector festival, which will bring together a sort of staggering array of artists for exhibitions, screenings, workshops, performances and round table discussions.

Included in the lineup are a slew of familiar game & artworld names including: Bill Viola, Tracy Fullerton, Alex Myers, Ed Key & David Kanaga, Droqen, Damian Sommer, Dames Making Games, Eddo Stern, Jon Rafman, Jim Munroe, Cindy Poremba, and Austin’s own Party Time! Hexcellent!

You can dig through the schedule at Vector’s site here, as well as the special programs here — including the opening reception happening in just a few hours time tonight — and buy your tickets for all the proceedings here.

Our upcoming party won’t be the only time you’ll be seeing UK multiplayer game party-collective The Wild Rumpus during March’s Game Developer’s Conference: the group have just announced Rumpus Royale MMXIII, a set of daily indie game tournaments that’ll be running throughout the entire week.

Included in the tournament lineup are Bennett Foddy’s keyboard-climber QWOP, Ramiro Corbetta’s SportsFriends entry Hokra, Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon and, super excitingly, Teknopants’ upcoming local favorite, Samurai Gunn.

Find more information & sign up for more detailed tournament specifics on the official Rumpus Royale MMXIII site.

[Fantastic Video is a regular Venus Patrol feature where we recap the goings-on of the 2012 installment of Austin’s Fantastic Arcade, the indie-game spinoff of Alamo Drafthouse’s genre film festival Fantastic Fest. You can find all the Fantastic Videos by clicking here, and find out more about Fantastic Arcade here!]

In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by Paolo ‘Molleindustria‘ Pedercini — the peerless leader of using games as socio-political commentary — and Jim Munroe, artist, novelist, filmmaker, indie game creator (who you may recall from his latest interactive fiction work, Guilded Youth) and co-founder of Toronto indie-collective Hand Eye Society.

The two discuss their latest game, Unmanned, an accessibly-light-hearted but ultimately sobering and prescient investigation of the life of drone pilots, which was in part an attempt to answer the question “how do you make a videogame about war, when war already has become so videogame-like?”

The hour long video also includes an in-depth discussion on Phone Story, Pedercini’s commentary on the practices and social repercussions of manufacturing the technology we use every day — specifically, our ubiquitous iPhones, which itself was presented as an iPhone minigame collection that was ultimately banned from the App Store, later resurfacing on the Android marketplace.

As a bonus, below the fold you’ll also find Pedercini’s “reverse propaganda” machinima film “Welcome to the desert of the real”, referenced in the video above and discussed at much greater length here by researcher Simon Ferrari.

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Wondering why Mossmouth’s overhauled and entirely essential Xbox 360 game Spelunky has had a slot for DLC? Now we know for sure: while the world is twiddling its collective thumbs for today’s PlayStation reveal, the dev quietly dropped its first two new bits of content since the game was released last July, in the form of new characters & multiplayer arenas.

The “Explorers DLC” adds “the Eskimo, the Robot, the Viking, the Round Girl, the Round Boy, the Cyclops, the Ninja, and the Golden Monk” to your stock of avatars (all pictured at top), while the “Arenas DLC” drops in 24 new multiplayer stages.

Both can be found via the Marketplace links here: Explorers & Arenas, while the game itself can be found here.

If you’re going to be in or around the Bay Area during this year’s Game Developers Conference and haven’t already picked up tickets for the Wednesday night Venus Patrol / Wild Rumpus party, you’re probably definitely going to want to now: we’re very excited to announce that the night will see the debut of a new multiplayer game created in collaboration with Katamari Damacy & Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi.

We’re keeping details pretty scarce for the moment, but will be showing more little teasers as the date draws near (expect another teaser from Keita directly in the next couple days) — the above two images (the latter also available in Vine form) are your first look at what the game holds in store.

Wild Rumpus & I will also soon be revealing more about the rest of the games & music lineup for the night, which is nearly complete and is looking very, very exciting.

You can find more information about the party — which is sponsored by our friends at Tumblr and will be held at San Francisco’s Public Works on Wednesday, March 27th — and pick up your tickets at the official website.

It only took us like six or so months to get everything online, but the day’s finally come: Venus Patrol’s proud to present the first installment of Fantastic Video, a new, regular series showing off all the talks from last year’s Fantastic Arcade.

In this first video, Rami Ismail & JW Nijman of Vlambeer give an hour-long look into the genesis & evolution of their upcoming Supermarionation-inspired dog-fighting game Luftrausers, a game that can be traced all the way back to 2007’s Airhound, a 3-hour game-jam game that since seems to unfortunately have disappeared from the internet, but which you can see a bit more of here.

Enjoy the video above & the rare chance to peek into JW’s consistently amazing pitch-docs & sketchbooks, and stay tuned for the next Fantastic Video installment!