2013 Festival Games

Cannon Brawl

Cannon Brawl is a game we've always wished existed: a fast paced mix of real time strategy and 2D artillery gameplay!

• www.cannonbrawlgame.com

chipzel

Chipzel is the alias of Niamh Houston, an independent chip-musician behind those Super Hexagon tracks you've heard the first 8 seconds of.

Constellation

Constellation is an interactive installation about creativity in which players navigate a projection of our night sky and create myths.

Constellation is an interactive art installation about creativity, myth, and social collaboration in which players use a motion controller to navigate a projection of our night sky and create constellations.

A Dallas-based group initially formed at the University of Texas at Dallas making independent games.

• http://vimeo.com/69206028

Crypt of the NecroDancer

Crypt of the NecroDancer is a hardcore roguelike rhythm game. Move to the beat of the game's epic soundtrack (or play with your own MP3s) while battling dancing skeletons, zombies, dragons, and more!

• http://necrodancer.com

Depression Quest

Depression Quest is an interactive fiction game where you play as someone living with depression. You are given a series of everyday life events and have to attempt to manage your illness, relationships, job, and possible treatment. This game aims to show other sufferers of depression that they are not alone in their feelings, and to illustrate to people who may not understand the illness the depths of what it can do to people.

• www.depressionquest.com

Dread

Dread is a game of horror and hope. Those who play will participate in a mutual telling of an original macabre tale. The goal of Dread is to sustain the delicate atmosphere that invokes the hand quivering emotion that lends its name to the game. The thrill of a Dread game lies within the tension between desire and loss. Conflicts in Dread are resolved through the physical task of taking a tile from a precariously stacked Tower of blocks.

• www.tiltingatwindmills.net

Filo Filo Disco

Filo Filo Disco is a p-p-p-pumpin' sports game for the most casual and the most competitive alike, featuring exhilarating disk hurling mania, rad dance beats, and warm fuzzy smiles.

• http://thosewhowearblue.com/

FootLOL: Epic Fail League

Turn football into FootLOL, with traps and tricks galore.

• http://footlol.herocraft.com/

Frequency Domain

Frequency Domain is about exploring music and sound, ideally creating a synesthetic experience for the player (currently through the use of colors and geometry that respond to the audio signal). Everything you see in the game is generated procedurally on the fly, either by the music or by the actions of the player.

• http://sagzorz.com

Get On Top

Get On Top is slapstick sumo game for two players.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a co-op micro-platformer for 2 or 1 players set inside a neon spaceship locked in battle with hordes of space baddies. Players work together running back and forth between ship control rooms, manning turrets, lasers, shields and thrusters to rack up points and stave off a vacuumy demise. Death may be a given, but at least you don’t have to face it alone!

Monster Stomp

Monster Stomp is a Big Game installation that simulates the experience of being a large monster who crashes through a city. On a course lit with ultraviolet lights and glowing neon, players navigate an urban game grid that is filled with fabric-covered foam skyscrapers, vehicles, and obstacles.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfMJzs-sZ0

Onirim

You are a Dreamwalker, lost in a mysterious labyrinth, and must discover the oneiric doors before your dreamtime runs out - or you will remain trapped forever! Onirim is solo or cooperative game where you try to find the doors to escape from the labyrinthine nightmare..

Papers Please

The communist state of Arstotzka has ended a 6-year war with neighboring Kolechia and reclaimed its rightful half of the border town, Grestin. Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists. Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission's primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested. Papers, Please! takes a systemic approach to expressing bureaucracy, futility and political satire.

• http://papersplea.se

Propinquity

Propinquity, is a ludic experience, explicitly focused on the body rather than the screen, that is designed to evoke both dancing and fighting games. It focuses on full body interaction and the use of sound and game play mechanics to produce an intensely social and physical experience.

• propinquity.ca

Rainbow Bacon: El Robo De Los Chanchos

Run, dash, juke your opponents, and retrieve the Rainbow Bacon. Rainbow Bacon is a physical team game which uses Playstation Move controllers!

• http://rainbowbacongame.com/

Ranamor

Ranamor (a Spanish portmanteau of frog and love) is an outdoor experience for crowds with smartphones (tested on iPhone and Android). In it, players' phones will sporadically generate a specific color and frog ribbit. Each player must seek another who has the same frog, and then they bump their phones together to score the match. If they're correct, they each score the frog and get information on their phone screen about that frog species, where it lives in the world, etc. Another frog sound loads, and the player continues until she has found all the frogs in the database (or until she's met enough new people). In addition to being an experience to play, this game also seeks to bring the collective sound of dozens of frogs chirping into the night into the urban environment of Culver City.

SoundodgerLIVE

Soundodger is a game about moving through the music. Each level features hand-crafted choreography of bullet patterns that must be dodged in order to perform for the entirety of a song.

• http://youtu.be/7G5gQm_nPmQ

Star Wench

Star Wench is a physical book in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of gamebooks. Unlike those games, the player is only allowed one choice: which page to open up to. Every page (of one hundred) describes a different way the protagonist will die, suffer or be imprisoned forever. Each page is a different losing condition.

• http://starwench.tumblr.com/

STEAM Carnival

A modern take on the traveling circus, STEAM Carnival is a technological extravaganza complete with contests, prizes, workshops, tasty food, live entertainment, and a midway loaded with challenging games and interactive experiences. We're using high-tech amusement and project-based kits to inspire kids of all ages to engage with science, technology, engineering, art and math Touring starts in Los Angeles Spring 2014, then off to San Francisco and beyond!

• http://steamcarnival.com

The Hearst Collection

The Hearst Collection is a live-action laser maze art heist game. Can you twist, crawl and slide to sneak through the lattice of laser tripwires, steal the masterpiece, and return with the painting, without alerting the authorities?

• www.smedresmania.com/the-hearst-collection/

To Be or Not To Be

To Be or Not To Be is a choose-your-own-path version of Hamlet! Now it's up to you to decide what happens next: play as Hamlet and revenge your father's death, play as Ophelia and make scientific discoveries, play as King Hamlet and die on the first page! To Be or Not To Be experiments with multiple, embedded layers of narrative choice in an accessible format.

• www.hamletbook.com

Tough Coded Live

Tough Coded": An in-your-face superfamicom on steroids head-to-head shmup-meets-RPG experience, executed LIVE by a Videogame DJ.

Voronoid

Voronoid is a multiplayer game of spatial dominance and aggression. Players must compete for control over an unpredictable, abstract playing field that changes with every passing moment. To emerge victorious, the winner must strike a balance between holding the high ground and strategically ramming her opponents into submission.

• http://zachtion.com/voronoid