Back in June of 2013, Venus Patrol announced at our HORIZON press conference that Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi had joined upstart studio Funomena to create their first major game, and now that game has just been revealed.

While they’re still remaining tight-lipped on the actual gameplay, Funomena says Wattam — a combination of the Tamil and Japanese words for “making a loop” — provides a hint to what the game will be about, “making connections between different types of things.”

Above is the first trailer for the game just revealed at the PlayStation Experience event, which introduces Wattam‘s main-character mayor, with more details expected to trickle out throughout 2015, all of which you’ll obviously probably be seeing here.

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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Following what I think we all can pretty much agree was an amazing lineup last year, I’m super happy to announce that Venus Patrol will once again be partnering with LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art to present the next installment of HORIZON: an alternative press conference that showcases beautiful, original games from studios both small and large.

The conference will be held at 10AM PST on Thursday, June 12th, 2014 — the same week as this year’s E3 expo — and hopes to give you a second dose of games as exciting as the ones we brought you last year, like Below, Sportsfriends, Hohokum, Kachina and, well, you remember last year’s big surprise still, don’t you.

If you’d like your game to be considered for the showcase, we’ve set up this survey for you to fill out over the next week. While we won’t be able to show everything submitted, we hope to once again highlight a selection that provides an alternative to the genre of games typically announced that week.

If you’re a member of the press, invites to the event will be headed your way shortly — so save the date now — email horizon@venuspatrol.com if you’re especially excited about attending and we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re there!

Thanks again to MOCAtv, Sarah Brin and our sponsors — who this year include Humble Bundle — for making this year’s conference possible, and see above to rewatch last year’s conference in its entirety if this is the first you’ve heard of this whole affair!

We hope to have much more to say about HORIZON in the coming weeks — and hope you’re as excited about the conference as we are!

One more HORIZON post for posterity’s sake: if you missed the Twitch.tv livestream of Venus Patrol & MOCAtv’s alternative E3 conference last week — graciously provided and masterminded by the super excellent production team at AREA5 — we’ve uploaded the conference in its entirety to YouTube so you can view it again at your leisure and on your device of choice.

As a reminder, you can also find more information, video, and big, gorgeous screenshots of all the HORIZON games at the conference’s website, as well as all the additional games curated by LA’s Sarah Brin for its post-show party.

Thanks again to all who have supported our efforts to showcase a selection of beautiful games to E3 — we hope to have more news soon on what’s next for HORIZON!

It’s been almost a week since we ran HORIZON, the alternative E3 press conference co-presented by Venus Patrol & MOCAtv, and to be honest, I think we’re all still recovering. Reaction to the conference has been more or less universally positive, and we’re super grateful both to everyone who made it happen and for all the kind words that have been coming in over the past few days from outfits like Polygon & The Verge.

That also includes photographer Brian Erzen, who documented the entire conference as it was happening, which we’re presenting here in slideshow form for those that couldn’t make it the day of. Above is the group shot or HORIZON’s presenters & participating developers that immediately followed the conference, and below the fold, a slew of other great photos of nearly everyone that took part.

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We’re just a couple more weeks away from HORIZON, the alternative press conference being presented by Venus Patrol and MOCAtv, the video channel of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and so I thought I’d share a bit more about what you can expect.

To that end, we’re lifting the lid just a bit to announce some of the participating studios of the showcase lineup, including Psychonauts, Brutal Legend & The Cave developers Double Fine, LittleBigPlanet & Tearaway creators Media Molecule, as well as Capy, the Toronto indies behind Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Critter Crunch & Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.

They, as well as a number of other studios both independent and otherwise, will be presenting a selection of their unreleased and unannounced games as part of the Thursday, June 13th event, which we are also making plans to livestream to the rest of the world.

The HORIZON event will also include an evening mixer, where a number of the participating developers can talk more with the invited press, and where attendees will find an additional selection of new games from the Los Angeles art/game community, curated by Sarah Brin.

Stay tuned for more specifics about the HORIZON event — we’re all really excited about how this is coming together and the lineup of games we’ll be showing off!

Wondering what’s been keeping Venus Patrol relatively radio-silent the past couple months? Here’s one big reason: Thursday, June 13th, concurrent with this year’s E3 expo, the site will be partnering with MOCAtv, the video channel of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, to present HORIZON, a press conference that will highlight a lineup of beautiful games as an alternative to what we’ve come to expect from standard E3 fare.

While we’re still keeping a tight lid on what the actual lineup will entail, the conference will present games from studios both small and large, and will showcase new looks at and details about some games you may have already heard of, as well as brand new games from some of your favorite developers, and very possibly some super secret new surprises that will be entirely unexpected.

If you’re a member of the press, invites to the event will be headed your way shortly — so save the date now — email horizon@venuspatrol.com if you’re especially excited about attending and we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re there!

The genesis of HORIZON came as Cory Schmitz (who is, of course, behind the fantastic HORIZON design) & I sat at home streaming last year’s string of E3 press conferences and instantly decided to “light a candle, rather than curse the darkness” and try to put together the E3 experience we wanted to see in the world.

Through the organizational help and guidance of Double Fine‘s Greg Rice, Mathew Kumar, and especially the involvement of MOCAtv and curator Sarah Brin (who also helped organize the super excellent Ahhhcade exhibition at SFMOMA during this year’s Game Developers Conference), we think we’re putting together something very exciting, which we hope will stand out and become a new E3 tradition.

We’ll have much more to say about HORIZON in the coming weeks — we hope you’ll start looking forward to this as much as we are!