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

You may have caught little snippets throughout the history of JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetups, but the time has finally come to bring it all together! Join us at Austin’s North Door next Thursday, May 1st, at 7:00PM, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents the first look at the final release of Sportsfriends, the new gold-standard indie multiplayer collection.

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

(more…)

A note to our friends in the Netherlands that this Friday, December 14th, through Sunday, December 16th, Art@DeBoo will be hosting the 2012 Playful Arts Festival, a weekend of games focused on “collaborative play” that will include all of the (now Kickstarted!) Sportsfriends lineup — Joust, BaraBariBall, Hokra & Pole Riders — as well as the live-orchestrated Cello Fortress and many more.

Global Game Jam & Dutch Game Garden organizer Zuraida ‘zo-ii‘ Buter curated the lineup, all of which you can see here, as well as a special Saturday night performance lineup that will include Kaho Abe‘s “two-player hyper-interactive, physical game”, Hit Me.

Find out ticketing and location information at the Playful Arts Festival website.

Another tribute to the final weekend of the Sportsfriends Kickstarter, this time from local fave comic artist Maré Odomo, with an illustrated breakdown of why you should definitely kick in.

The eagle-eyed will note that not only does Venus Patrol designer Cory Schmitz make a guest appearance, but also chipscene regulars Anamanaguchi (“in someone’s living room”), my Wild Rumpus cohorts from this year’s Wild Rumpus/One Life Left/Venus Patrol GDC party, and David Mauro’s “Babycastles no Fukushuu: Manhattan Fury” & Hilary Florido’s “Codependent No Moe” custom-painted arcade cabinets for NYC game-event group Babycastles.

As before, this is the last weekend to make a difference in bringing all of the Sportsfriends games to a wider audience: donate to the campaign at Kickstarter.

Artist, game-maker and our own resident TIGSource DevLog editor Dominique ‘Dom2D‘ Ferland does faux-anaglyph justice to Sportsfriends, the previously-featured four-game ultra-collection of local-multiplayer greatness, including Johann Sebastian Joust, BaraBariBall, Hokra and Super Pole Riders.

The collection is in the home stretch of its Kickstarter and still needs a lotta love — dig deep this weekend and help bring these games to the masses, before it’s too late!

Here’s how this all went down: QWOP & GIRP creator Bennett Foddy wrote up a lengthy post for the official PlayStation Blog, detailing his plans for updating Pole Riders for the Sportsfriends campaign, and, watching the above teaser video for about the millionth time, the 4/4 beat got my head bobbing just enough to think that there was an amazing full-length dance mix aching to come out of it.

And so, I said as much on Twitter, and then, just hours later, fellow Soulwax superfan Mark “Tole Cover” Hinog took up the challenge, and thus the mix below was born:

I basically couldn’t be happier with it, especially the bit where Frobisher Says artist Dick Hogg provides its percussive vocals, and it makes me wonder if we shouldn’t start doing remix contests more regularly… If anyone else feels like taking up the mantle, drop me a note!

And now, the news people have been asking for for over a year: Die Gute Fabrik, Noah Sasso, Ramiro Corbetta and Bennett Foddy have just announced Sportsfriends, a four game collection for PC, Mac and PlayStation 3 that will see the combined release of Hokra, BaraBariBall, an updated version of Foddy’s Pole Riders, and — finally! — a full-featured version of Johann Sebastian Joust.

The four developers have taken to Kickstarter to bring the games to PlayStation 3 (and help port each game around to the various platforms they don’t already exist on), where $15 will net you a copy of the collection on its release sometime in Autumn of 2013, along with a bonus copy of Tennnes, created by Vlambeer’s JW Nijman.

For twice that you get early beta access to all the games in the collection far sooner than the projected release date, and twice that will also get you bonus games from Sasso, Corbetta and Foddy. Higher-level backers can get a Joust ‘starter-kit’ with seven PlayStation Move controllers and custom “charms” (see above for an illustrated example of the Ink-It Labs product) to clasp to & identify your own set, a package of pre-configured Mega GIRP dance mats, or the ultra rare 18-player version of Joust.

At the highest level, you can even get two real-live actual trampolines to play Foddy’s Get On Top, recently featured at the Venus Patrol Training Facility, alongside, totally not-coincidentally, all of the Sportsfriends games. As you might have guessed, the Training Facility was my way to help introduce the games that would eventually make its way into this campaign to a wider audience.

Find more details about the campaign and all of the included games at Kickstarter — with Joust being an instrumental part of Venus Patrol’s own campaign, this is obviously one that I’m incredibly excited for & wholeheartedly endorse.

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!

(more…)