Fantastic Arcade

Austin, TX-Thursday, August 12, 2010-Fantastic Arcade, the new independent games festival presented by America's largest genre film festival Fantastic Fest, today announced their principal line-up of twenty-nine indie game titles to be featured at this year's debut independent games event.

Mike Plante, Fantastic Arcade curator, revealed the twenty-nine game titles selected for the festival by himself and fellow curators Eddo Stern and Roger Erik Tinch. The titles are comprised of eight spotlight titles, vying for honors and recognition at Fantastic Arcade, while the other twenty-one indie game titles are previously-released games chosen to be showcased on the basis of their ingenuity, style and attitude fitting within the Fantastic Fest world. Games will be available for free play on custom-built arcade-style gameplay stations and more than twenty brand new Alienware notebooks, featuring the Alienware M15x and Alienware M17x gaming notebooks.

The Fantastic Arcade Spotlight competition entries include eight PC gametitles Enviro-Bear 2000 from game designer Justin Smith in Vancouver; Every Day the Same Dream from Carnegie-Mellon professor Paolo Pedercini; Feist, by game developers Florian Faller and Adrian Stutz of Zurich; Machinarium from Jakub Dvorský, game designer and visual artist from the Czech Republic; Monaco, from San Diego-based game designer Andy Schatz, Nidhogg, from L.A.-based experimental game designer Mark Essen; Norrland from freeware game designer Cactus in Sweden; and Ulitsa Dimitrova from German game designers Gerard Delmas and Lea Schönfelder. Learn more at http://fantasticfest.bside.com/2010/films/category/Arcade.

The Fantastic Arcade Showcase features the following twenty-one game titles: Braid (from game designer Jonathan Blow); Canabalt (Adam Atomic), which will be featured in a special Fantastic Arcade game torunament; The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile (Ska Studios); Dustforce! (Hitbox); Flotilla (Blendo Games); Garden Gnome Carnage (Daniel Remar); Gravity Bone (Blendo Games); Human Centipede The Game! (I-Mockery); Inside a Dead Skyscraper (Molle Industria); Limbo (Playdead); McDonald's The Videogame (Molle Industria); Oiligarchy (Molle Industria); Operation: Pedopriest (Molle Industria); Overgrowth (Wolfire Games); The Path (Tale of Tales); Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style); Super Columbine Massacre RPG (Danny Ledonne); Sword & Sworcery EP (Superbrothers, Capy & Jim Guthrie); Tiny and Big: Up That Mountain (Black Pants Studio); Trine (Frozenbyte); and Zeno Clash (ACE Team).

Plante offers, "One of the goals of Fantastic Arcade is to provide a modest but fun venue for independently-made video games that fit within the genre and attitudes that the Fantastic Fest film festival already thrives on. We picked some games with an experimental style in their design and others are so filmic it looks like Terry Gilliam made them. A few have social commentary powerful enough to write your college thesis about. Mostly, the Fantastic Arcade is going to be kick-ass fun."

The winning Fantastic Arcade Spotlight Competition designer receives a Dell Inspiron M501R notebook. The second place designer receives an ATI graphics card ($500 value). Competition semi-finalists and winners will be announced live at the Fantastic Arcade Awards Show at 7 pm on Sunday, September 26 at the HighBall Ballroom, followed immediately by the Fantastic Arcade closing night party.

The indie game designers will show off their new titles to an audience mix of Fantastic Fest attendees and game fans. More than 4,000 attendees are expected to visit Fantastic Arcade over four days for hands-on gameplay action in a fun, high octane environment at top Austin entertainment venue, the HighBall. Fantastic Arcade sponsors and partners include Alienware, Dell's premiere high end PC division, along with G4, AMD, Dell, 101X, Austin Chronicle, CW Austin, Arcade UFO, GameOver Games, GDC Online, SXSW Screenburn, Texas Film Commission, and The Guildhall at SMU.

Attendees at Fantastic Arcade will have a choice of a single day pass for $20, with access to all Fantastic Arcade films, panels, parties, happy hour and game demos for one day, or a basic $10 pass that provides access to the game demos and arcade for a single day. The VIP Fantastic Arcade Pass for $60 provides access to everything for all four festival days, plus a limited edition Fantastic Arcade T-shirt. Fantastic Arcade tickets can be purchased online now at www.fantasticfest.com/tickets-2/.

About Fantastic Fest

www.fantasticfest.com

Dubbed "The Geek Telluride" by showbiz bible Variety, Fantastic Fest is also known as the "Comic Con of film festivals." Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the United States, showcasing eight days of offbeat cinema from independents, international filmmakers and major Hollywood studios. The 2009 edition hosted over 70 world, U.S. and regional premieres of the latest sci-fi, horror, fantasy and cult films from around the world. Fantastic Fest is scheduled for September 23-30, 2010.

For more into or to secure a media pass for Fantastic Arcade, contact Fiona Cherbak, ThemePark Studios, (512) 916-9633 or fiona@themeparkstudios.com, or contact Mike Plante, Fantastic Arcade creative director, at mike.plante@fantasticfest.com. For more information, visit www.fantasticfest.com/arcade.