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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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

With PAX East having kicked off today, the latest issue of the TIGSource DevLog looks at a number of indie projects from the forums which are being showcased in Boston through Sunday.

The Indie Megabooth alone is home to a staggering number of games featured below, including: Chasm, Delver’s Drop, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Phantom P.I. Mission Apparition. At the accompanying Minibooth, you’ll be able to find Burrito Galaxy, Relativity and Rex Rocket.

Elsewhere, following news that both Rain World and Oblitus have struck a deal with Adult Swim Games, you’ll be able to find both at that publisher’s booth.

As usual, check back next Friday for a new issue!

[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

With GDC and the IGF Awards at our backs, you’d think the indies could take it easy for at least a few days, but you’d be wrong!

This week’s issue of the Devlog is a round up of some very interesting projects — a few of which have been in development for quite some time already.

And given that EGX Rezzed is in full swing in Birmingham right now, and will be through Sunday the 30th, this issue features some of the indie games being displayed there, including TinyKeep, Kaiju Panic and Light — all of which are playable there, along with Narcissus (which was previously featured in Issue #16).

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

Want to get the first look at some of the best independent games of 2013? Then join us Thursday, February 7th, at 7:00PM at the North Door as JUEGOS RANCHEROS brings five games nominated for top awards at this year’s Independent Games Festival.

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

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Back in late January, I was stopped short by a single screenshot that emerged from Toronto’s local hub of the 2012 Global Game Jam, the one you see directly below, for Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, a game self-described as “Jumpman meets Asteroids meets Han saying “Don’t get cocky”:

Though, to be honest, it wasn’t too big a shock, as in addition to illustrator Jamie Tucker and programmer Adam Winkels, the Spacetime team also included Matt Hammill, whose work I’d been consistently floored by going back to his original student game Gesundheit (which later saw commercial release), and who you might also recognize as the ASCII master behind Jim Munroe’s recently-featured (and newly award winning!) adventure Guilded Youth.

The team, now joined by musician Ryan Henwood & officially re-grouped as Asteroid Base, haven’t stopped there: they’ve taken the past year to prepare the game — in which two players frantically ward off waves of enemy attack by manning various battle-stations on their cross-sectioned ship — for commercial release next year.

Most recently, Hammill put together a fantastic look at the various & awesomely unusual visual inspirations for the game, which — in the spirit of recent inspiration posts by the God of Blades team and the artist-lineup behind Honeyslug’s Frobisher Says — he’s given Venus Patrol permission to feature here, included below the fold, with Hammill’s own commentary.

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[Every Friday on Venus Patrol, designer Dominique ‘Dom2D‘ Ferland presents TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back each Friday for the latest picks!]

In this issue, a bunch of new games have been added to the forums, including Gesundheit‘s creator Matt Hammill’s new project, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. We also see the release of Snayke and Droqen’s four-game collection Probability 0 + Friends!