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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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!

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 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 on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

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Nottingham-based filmmaker Matthew Taylor got in touch with this video he shot at this year’s GameCity of ‘Wild Proteus‘, the live & improvised concert-type playthrough of Ed Key & David Kanaga’s game that I supplied some honestly not super great iPhone footage of a month or so ago.

Taylor ups the ante considerably, as you can see above, and captures a number of magic moments, like a.) the guy so lulled by the lullaby ambiance that he literally nods off, and, on the opposite side of the spectrum, b.) Fez creator Phil Fish, captivated and wide-eyed, drinking in the scenery along with his coffee.

See more of Taylor’s video work — including this similar clip of former thatgamecompany (now Funomena) producer Robin Hunicke “performing” Journey live at GameCity 2011 — at Vimeo.

Totally taken with this new, hour-long mixtape produced by Dyad, Panoramical and Proteus composer David Kanaga in advance of his live-performance of the latter with designer Ed Key (featured here just a short while back) at GameCity7.

It’s a nicely tuned blend of jazz/folk/piano/electronic, with just enough of Kanaga’s own material for Proteus (some of which, says Key, is sampled from the mixtape’s tracks) that it gives the awesome effect of lazing with a disc-man under one of the game’s low-bit trees, with cheap enough headphones that the ambient sound of the in-game world occasionally bleeds through and fades away.

[mejsaudio src=”http://venuspatrol.com/ofiles/proteusgamecity7mix.mp3″]

You can stream the whole thing above, or download it via this new post by Key on the Proteus Live event itself, about which he adds, intriguingly, that the god-like manual controls that helped sculpt the hour-long experience will likely come to the final released version of the game, creating a multiplayer experience where “one person could play on mouse or joypad, whilst someone else controlled the environment via the keyboard.”

Here’s what we already knew, thanks to maybe the happiest hunch I’ll ever have in my life: Ed Key & David Kanaga’s musical exploration game Proteus is able to transform any space it enters into a fantastic dreamscape, proven out at its chill-out room installation at the Wild Rumpus/One Life Left/Venus Patrol party we collectively threw last March during the Game Developers Conference. There, a few dozen people at a time sat back & blissed out, engrossed in nothing more than someone slowly wending their way around its dynamic landscape.

Here’s what I couldn’t have known until it was quietly revealed as a feature of this year’s GameCity: performed live, as in, again controlled by a single person, but with more power of its progression put back into the hands of creator Key & with direct (rather than procedural) accompaniment by Kanaga on keys, it’s even more sublime than probably anyone would have imagined.

The ‘concert’ lasted for the better part of a full hour, with Key & Kanaga happy to give just enough freedom to the player to lend the performance an air of improvisation, while retaining an amount of control (see Key’s god-mode crib-sheet above, which I spy-cam-snapped only to discover later that his handwriting rendered the espionage more or less an impenetrable wash) to ensure that the game wouldn’t “end” until they were ready for it to.

With any luck, this won’t be the only time a performance like this occurs, as it’s not really an overstatement to say that it left the audience struck somewhat dumb — in the meantime, do your own best bootleg facsimile by picking up the game here if you haven’t already, and join us all in discovering why it’s truly one of 2012’s greatest.

Exciting news long hinted at that can finally be revealed: AdamAtomic’s Capsule Capsule won’t be the only Venus Patrol related activity that this year’s GameCity7 festival. As announced on the festival blog this morning, the site will be taking over a large chunk of Nottingham’s Old Market Square for an entire week, and converting it into The Venus Patrol Training Facility (featuring an amazing remixed logo by Dick Hogg).

The Training Facility, open October 20th through the 27th from 10am to 5pm, will house a number of games loosely bound together with a quasi-athletic theme from a handful of local favorites including QWOP & GIRP developer Bennett Foddy, Frobisher Says & Hohokum creators Honeyslug, and all of the games included in the recent Sportsfriends Quadrathalon.

Most excitingly, the Training Facility will house the public premiere of two games recently developed during a Danish countryside retreat controlled by trampoline jumps. The first will be The Proteus Frog God Mod, in which players instead experience Ed Key & David Kanaga’s Proteus from the perspective of the magical twinkling frogs, co-created with George Buckenham.

We’ll also be showcasing Get On Top, a new competitive trampoline game by Foddy & Joust creator Doug Wilson, where players take on the role of two sumo champs locking hands and trying to leap into the air and pin their opponent.

Videos of all of the games that will be available (and GameCity’s pithy commentary on each) are below the fold, and more details can be found on GameCity7’s website (see also: the full schedule of all other activities coming to the festival). Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

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Now in its second year, the GameCity Prize is meant to do for the videogame world what British institution Tate does for the art world with their Turner Prize, by choosing a shortlist of “the most brilliant, interesting and meaningful” games from the prior year and having them judged by “cultural commentators” from outside the games industry — to give the broader world a perspective on what’s happening in games somewhat underneath the surface.

This year, the just-announced shortlist includes a number of familiar faces, including Polytron’s Fez, Ed Key & David Kanaga’s Proteus (at top), thatgamecompany’s Journey (above), and Die Gute Fabrik’s Johann Sebastian Joust, up alongside more mainstream entries like Catherine, Super Mario 3D Land, and Mass Effect 3.

This year the top prize will be chosen from the list by a jury chaired by the film maker Lord Puttnam and including Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway, comic artist David Gibbons, UK designer Wayne Hemingway, BBC journalist Samira Ahmed, writer Ekow Eshun, actress Louise Brealey, actor Charlie Higson and BBC Radio DJ Jo Whiley.

The winner will be announced on October 24th at a ceremony at GameCity, where Venus Patrol will be attending with AdamAtomic’s Capsule, as well as a few more surprises up our sleeves… Visit the GameCity Prize website to learn more about the Prize & its nominees and jury.

Another location-specific update: Portland-area readers will want to clear off their Friday nights for XOXO Fringe‘s arcade, a free-to-the-public event starting at 7PM at Union/Pine, as part of the recently Kickstarted XOXO arts and tech festival, created by Andy Baio & Andy McMillan.

This very website curated the selection of games available at the arcade, which will include Messhof’s Nidhogg, Ed Key & David Kanaga’s Proteus, Noah Sasso’s Barabariball, Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon, Die Gute Fabrik’s Johann Sebastian Joust, the very first look at the new game from Big Bucket, the team behind the 2010 iPhone/iPad/Mac game The Incident, and more.

In addition to the games, there’ll also be a live performance from Disasterpeace, the musician behind the soundtrack to Polytron’s Fez, which I can say from experience is an unmissable show.

Below the fold, I’ll stick video of all of the above for the uninitiated, so you can see what you’re getting into. I unfortunately couldn’t make it out to the event, so take lots of pictures for us! See the official XOXO Fringe site for more information.

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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 — both local and global, and both indie and occasionally a bit-bigger-budget — for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are be presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

(more…)