Nordic Game Indie Night 2012 – Call for Submissions

Nordic Game Conference, in collaboration with the Copenhagen Game Collective, is pleased to announce the 3rd annual Nordic Game Indie Night showcase. The purpose of the showcase is to celebrate talented indie developers from around the Nordic region.

Last year’s showcase featured a mix of well-known Nordic Indies and upcoming underground hits. The audience selected winner of the event and winner of the Nordic Indie Sensation Award, Vikings on Trampolines, by Norwegian, D-Pad Studios is announced to be their next game in development after finishing their highly anticipated Owlboy.

The showcase will be curated by the Copenhagen Game Collective with help from an extended jury of previous finalists and Nordic indie developers.

Are you an indie developer based in the Nordic region? Are you working on a game that’s innovative, special, or noteworthy in some way? Or maybe it’s just really fun? We want to see it!

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The wild rumpus #2 and Monkey See, Monkey Mime

Tomorrow; Thursday 2nd February 2012, a – to put it in their own words - unique nights out of crazy, exuberant, social and sometimes physical gameplay is happening in East London. I, of course, am talking about the Wild Rumpus. If you are in the neighborhood, please feel free to check it out, since it is free and some interesting games are being showcased there.

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Where Is My Heart? At E3!

Those of you attending E3 this week should stop by the IndieCade booth! Our very own PSP game Where Is My Heart? will be on display for the public to try. Even better, it will be joined by a number of other rad indie games (we’re particularly excited about Honeyslug’s Hohokum and Richard Boeser’s Ibb & Obb).

In addition, IndieCade asked us to design a special B.U.T.T.O.N.-inspired poster for their E3 showcase. Nils had a lot of fun with the assignment. But who are those other people in the photo with us?! See if you can figure out who they are!

A Social Active Game Experience

Our friend Adam Henriksson at the Umeå Institute of Design is writing/making a thesis project about social interaction in games. He actually flew all the way down to Copenhagen for our Arcade Boat party to shoot some footage.

This week he edited this beautiful two-minute trailer! So inspiring, we’re so honored to be a part of it. Give it a watch:

And congrats to Adam, who apparently just won a “best project” award for the thesis! Well deserved.

Lau & Doug vs. Gamereactor – Round Three

At Nordic Game Indie Night, Lau and I also did another video interview with our friends at Gamereactor. Yup, we played the fool, yet again:

Grapefrukt and Petri present: Platformer Physics!

This video is so much fun that it deserved its own post.

At Nordic Game Indie Night, our friends Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho used upcoming indie game Cobalt by Oxeye Game Studio as an excuse to launch into a detailed lecture on physics in platformer games. Lau and I make a guest appearance. Enjoy!

Nordic Game Conference 2011

Man, Nordic Game Conference 2011 was a blast! We had our hands full this year. In addition to throwing our 2nd annual Nordic Game Indie Night (NGIN) party and exhibition, we also curated the brand new Indie Track this year.

Indie Night was packed this year. The lecture hall was so crowded that we couldn’t even fit everyone! I suppose we’ll have to get a bigger room next year. Growing pains aside, it was great to see so much interest in the regional indie scene. After all, that’s really the whole point of the showcase – to call attention to all the rad things that indies are doing here in the Nordic countries.

Here are some photos of Indie Night, courtesy our friend Zo – ii:

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Arcade Boat 2011

Together with Illutron (formerly known as Half Machine), we’re throwing a Spring party!

What: Merriment and local hand-crafted indie games
Who: Us, the Copenhagen Game Collective!
Where: Illutron, Alliancevej, Teglholmens Østkaj 43, Copenhagen (map here)
When: Saturday, May 14, 4pm till late

Why? Because the only thing better than playing videogames is playing them on a BOAT!

Facebook event page here.

Over the last year, we’ve had the opportunity to showcase our games all around Europe and North America. Now, we’d like to throw an exhibition here at home, to party with our home crowd and to show Copenhagen what we’ve been working on.

We’re teaming up with Illutron, a “collaborative interactive art studio” based on a big ol’ barge in the Copenhagen South Harbor at Teglholmen. Formerly known as “Half Machine,” Illutron throws some of the best exhibitions and parties in Copenhagen. We’re very excited to join forces!

Don’t worry, the ship is anchored by shore, so you’re free to come and go whenever you like. Yes, it’s all the way down in Sydhavn, but it will certainly be worth the bike/train ride. Get directions here.

We’ll be showing B.U.T.T.O.N., Where Is My Heart, Johann Sebastian Joust!, Monkey See Monkey Mime, and more. As far as I’m aware, this will be the very first public demo of the soon-to-be-finished Where Is My Heart build. Awesome!

And who knows, we might even bust out some crazy folk games!

Make sure to bring cash if you want to buy beer. Or feel free to bring your own booze. Weather permitting, we may also set up some grills, so feel free to bring your own grillables/dinner too.

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NGIN 2011!

Here are the full details for this year’s Nordic Game Indie Night (NGIN):

Who: Indies from around the Nordic region!
What: Developer talks, showcase of games, and party!
When: Tuesday evening, May 10
Where: Luftkastellet i Slagthuset, Malmö, Sweden

Doors open at 19:00h
Developer talks, 19:30h-21:30h
Party and exhibition at 21:30h

Music by Nifflas, Digital Nature, and Nils Deneken
VJs: Oppe Om Natten

And it’s all free and open to the public!

Read more about the event here, and about the eight finalists here.

Spread the word. We hope to see you there!

NGIN ’11 Finalists

Our jury has been busy looking at and playing Nordic indie games, and now we’re finally ready to announce our final lineup for this year’s Nordic Game Indie Night showcase. Without further ado, here are the finalists:

We received about 65 submissions, so competition was tough! There are so many games that we’re eager to share that this year we decided to expand this showcase to eight games (last year we showed six games). Additionally, one of these eight games will be selected for this year’s “Indie Sensation” award at the Nordic Game Award ceremony on May 11. Exciting!

Four of the games have not yet been released, so there will be lots to see and play this year! Nordic Indie Game Night 2011, a part of the Nordic Game Conference, takes place Tuesday evening, May 10, at Slagthuset in Malmö, Sweden. The showcase/party is free and open to the public. More details very soon, watch this blog and/or our Twitter feed for updates.

Our jury consisted of nine members of the Copenhagen Game Collective, and was chaired by Lau Korsgaard, Lawrence Johnson, and Douglas Wilson. Below, we’ve provided a brief statement about our selection process and the eight game selections.

More than anything, our jury was looking for games that had a certain indie “soul” to them. This “soul” is difficult to articulate. It lies somewhere in between the elements of gameplay, narrative, graphics, and sound, and is ultimately a product of how all these elements are combined into a unified whole. In some cases, we chose games that became a big hit around the office – games that we found ourselves returning to again and again.  In other cases, we chose more unpolished prototypes that demonstrated a clear and promising vision. Some of the finalist games are quite small, while others are more ambitious in scope. More than anything, the games that ended up catching our attention were the ones that have a certain edge to them – a unique and personal style. We hope you’ll agree!

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