September 21, 2014 | Wiley Wiggins

Fantastic Arcade Day 3

A day of illuminating game talks and a night of unbelievable feats of skill.

We started out Saturday with a little round of pencil&paper party game Monstro Cards, by local game developers White Whale. Monstro Cards has been described as a sort of combination of Pictionary and Cards Against Humanity , and the special team-based variant they tried out with the Arcade audience was fun to watch and easy to play.

David Kalina and Randy Smith of Tiger Style were up next, with two talks- one the scoring mechanics of their new game Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon (in preparation for their high score competition) and a research talk on the history of secret societies (one of which features as a story setpiece in the game).

Next was a talk by Tom Francis, who’s game Gunpoint was in 2012’s FA showcase. This year Tom has two games in the selection; the space stealth game Heat Signature, and bonus game SimAntics: Realistic Anteater Simulator (created with Liselore Goedhart as part of the Super Game Jam series).

After a short talk from Brian Silva from Sony about how indies can publish on the playstation platform, we transitioned to a block of Sony sponsored tournaments in Theater 3.

N++ was a real surprise delight- while plenty of folks in the theater had experience with previous incarnations of the game, N++ was new to everyone. Rounds were fast, the carnage was unending, and the tension was delicious as the spaces between winner and loser in each round seemed tighter than the last.

Next up was a game that is practically a Fantastic Arcade tradition now, with skills honed over time, Arcade combatants picked up their respective foils and faced off at Nidhogg.

Watch live video from venuspatrol on Twitch

Towerfall is a game that involves so many rapidly moving objects on screen at once that it can be hard to do running commentary on- stop to talk about something and in the space of every word that leaves your mouth a player has met their end or something amazing happens. We saw more midair catching and returning of arrows, wild Mario head-stomps, and bomb death at Saturday night’s tournament than I thought was possible.

Finally a marathon Nuclear Throne speedrun exhibition thrilled us and beat us into a stupor, with special guest emcees Paul Veer and Jukio Kallio. Several players came incredibly close to taking the Nuclear Throne, with two simultaneous games running at all times in split-screen. Several pro players took part, including a tense match as partners and rivals Rami Ismail and JW Nijman competed against each other at their own game. All players performed admirably, but the evening’s winner was Arcade Tournament regular and Disorder developer Saam Pahlavan, who picked a risky character (eyes), but played methodically and conservatively, dying just moments away from the throne.

Photos by Andres Lombana Bermudez

For a million little bite-sized slices of Arcade, check out #fantasticarcade on Vine. Follow us on Twitter for more news and updates.

---