September 20, 2014 | Wiley Wiggins

Fantastic Arcade Day 2

Another day of unbelievable games and their devoted and unique creators.

Day 2 of Fantastic Arcade can only be described as a rager. Once again we started our day in The Highball, this time talking to local Charles Elwonger about his minimalist first-person experiment Lost in the Woods, then to Glitchhikers developer “ceMelusine” about the strain of balancing a dayjob in software development with making his own games.

At one we discovered secret Fjords connections in The Floor is Jelly, and then Santa Ragione developer Pietro Righi Riva showed us the history of their spotlight game Fotonica.

Next was spotlight game Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime’s co-creator Matt Hammill. A retina-searingly colorful candy-constellation buddy game where two tiny astronauts pilot a death-star like contraption on an interstellar rescue mission.

After a breif period of homelessness we joined special guest speaker Tim Schafer and scholar/game designer George Royer for a talk about his groundbreaking classic Grim Fandango. A line of expectant fans snaked out of the theater hall and into the lobby, as we scrambled to find extra chairs for the event. The pair gave us an in-depth exploration of the world of Grim and its influences of film noir, art deco, thano-mythology, and just about every other molecule of Grim’s DNA. We also heard about the process of revisiting the game and its surviving production assets in order to create the upcoming HD remaster.

We flowed from the Grim Fandango talk into the night’s first tournament- spotlight game Gang Beasts, which has just been picked up by Schafer’s company Double Fine. Gang Beasts is a game that is simultaneously brutal and cute, with doughy, bloodless, colorful characters that maul, grab and fling each other to their final rewards. (check out recorded livestream of an interview with developer James Brown, followed by the match, with commentary from Tim Schafer and Vlambeer’s JW Nijman)

We were especially honored to have the tradition of Fantastic Arcade custom levels continue with a special Gang Beasts Alamo Drafthouse theater level. It was… disorienting to see peer through the screen to see the theater we were sitting in, with another surprise lurking beyond the second ‘screen’.

After gang beasts came the queasily intimate grappler Push Me Pull You. Developers House House took us through the design process of the game, their first effort as game creators, but one that has already catapulted to forefront of indie multiplayer gaming.

For live streaming events from Arcade, check out the Venus Patrol Twitch channel, sponsored by Devolver Digital. For a million little bite-sized slices of Arcade, check out #fantasticarcade on Vine. Follow us on Twitter for updates and news about the festival as it happens.

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