Good news for those across the pond, as UK supergroup Wild Rumpus have officially announced the date, time & nautical location of their next multiplayer games event.

The group will be taking to the high seas, sort of, for a party aboard the MS Stubnitz that will not only include a live set from Super Hexagon composer Chipzel, but the UK debut of Keita Takahashi’s Tenya Wanya Teens, its first appearance abroad following our GDC party & most recent JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup.

The Rumpus is happening Saturday, May 11th, just one day after the UK indie conference Bit of Alright, which will also be aboard the Stubnitz and will include talks from Thomas Was Alone‘s Mike Bithell, Hide & Seek’s Holly Gramazio, Wild Rumpus’s own George Buckenham, writer & game designer Cara Ellison, Redshirt creator Mitu Khandaker and many more.

Tickets for the Rumpus are currently on sale via eventbrite here, just a few hops away from Bit of Alright’s own eventbrite, where you can purchase tickets for the day-long conference. More of the lineup for both events will be available soon via Wild Rumpus & Bit of Alright‘s respective sites.

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

It’s been years since we’ve last seen a new game from Keita Takahashi — most famous for his Namco cult classic Katamari Damacy and the even cultier PS3/iPhone game Noby Noby Boy — but this Thursday, April 4th, at 7:00PM, JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be showing not one but two brand new works from the esteemed designer at the North Door.

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

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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.

Maybe the fastest turnaround between awesome and awful news: Katamari Damacy & Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi has just announced the thing we all feared the most (or is it just my own recurring nightmare?), that Namco Bandai will be removing and no longer supporting the Noby Noby Boy iPhone & iPad apps from the App Store next Tuesday, October 9th.

What exactly this means for the service at large is still undetermined: for months now, submitted meters wouldn’t actually be subtracted from the app’s running total, and the Facebook counterpart where you earned badges based on the size of your submission had long since fallen into disrepair as well, but there’s no word yet on whether the servers will continue to run and the PS3 game, at least, will further GIRL’s goal of stretching toward the edge of the solar system.

For now, then, a reminder to grab the app if you haven’t already, which Keita admits is “a totally silly app, but I’m enjoying it sometimes, even now”, signing off simply by saying, “Thank you for playing this silly app.”