Slamdance, the independent film festival started in 1995 as an alternative to the commercialized Sundance Film Festival, is again shaking things up by adding video games to the mix. The Guerilla Gamemaker Competition will be held concurrently with the Slamdance Film Festival, taking place in Park City, Utah, January 18-27.
“Video games today are as important and influential as movies have ever been,’ says Slamdance president and co-founder Peter Baxter. ‘The type and standard of creativity we are seeing at Slamdance Games is akin to the trail blazing days of independent filmmaking, a time that artists reacted with more imagination and against the generic fare of the movie studio.”
The Guerilla Gamemaker Competition is focused on on the art of game design and the creative professionals who bring entertainment experiences to gamers. The games will screen in competition, just as the films do, and winners will be selected by a jury comprised of game industry professionals and luminaries. Grand Jury Award winners will receive more than $5,000 in cash and prizes. There will also be an Audience Award and a student competition that will offer a summer fellowship with the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab in the Interactive Media Division.
“We are very excited about the finalists for this year’s GGC,” remarks Sam Roberts, Slamdance’s Games Competition Manager. “This year’s entrants range from biting indictments of modern corporate culture to fantastical adventures crashing castles. We have interactive fiction, beat-em-ups, non-traditional puzzle games and experiments in flow theory. These games push the edges of what games can be and can try to be, experimenting in art style, gameplay, metaphor, story, concept and time.’
A total of 14 independently designed video game finalists have been selected for the inaugural competition. The nominees are Base Invaders by Seven Sigma and Matt Miner (U.S.); The Blob by Banana Games and Jasper Koning (The Netherlands); Book and Volume by Nick Monfort (U.S.); Braid by Number None and Jonathan Blow (U.S.); Castle Crashers by The Behemoth and John Baez ( U.S.); Cultivation by Jason Rohrer (U.S.); Everyday Shooter by Queasy Games and Jonathan Mak (Canada); flOw by flow and Jenova Chen (U.S.); Once Upon a Time by Waking Games Inc. and Justin Meagher (Canada); Plasma Pong by Steve Taylor (U.S.); Steam Brigade by Pedestrian Entertainment and Ryan Thom (U.S.); Super Columbine Massacre RPG! by Danny Ledonne (U.S.); Toblo by Toblo and Steve Chiavelli (U.S.); and Toribash by Toribash and Hampus Soderstrom (Singapore).
Descriptions of the games in competition and more information on The Guerilla Gamemaker Competition and the Slamdance Film Festival in general can be found at www.slamdance.com/games.
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