2012 Promises to be a fruitful year for the notgames community, with 10 new releases planned by 7 of its members. One of these titles, Dear Esther, has already stirred up quite a bit of attention recently with its quadruple nomination in the Independent Games Festival. But there’s more where that came from.
NOTGAMES RELEASES IN 2012
The first release, on January 31st, is “Flight of The Fireflies” by Jonathan Hise Kaldma at Woolly Robot: an iPad application featured in last August’s Notgames Fest in the Cologne Game Lab during the Game Developers Conference. On February 14, then, The Chinese Room will release the new version of “Dear Esther”, also featured in the Notgames Fest. And finally in the first quarter, György Dudas will release “As Slow As Possible”.
In the second quarter of 2012, Shane Edward Semler of Ghostwheel Games is set to release “Alien Worlds Explorer” for iPad.
The third quarter of 2012 will be the busiest of all. Dan Pinchbeck of The Chinese Room will release his mysterious “gameB”. Jeroen D. Stout of Stout Games, creator of IGF 2011 Nuovo nominee “Dinner Date”, will release “Cheongsam”. Plural Games‘ Nicolai Troshinsky, also nominated for the IGF Nuovo award in 2011 with “Loop Raccord”, will release his new “Landscape”. Woolly Robot is set to release their “Unannounced notpuzzle game”. And last but not least, Tale of Tales, creators of “The Path” and “The Graveyard”, both IGF finalists as well, will release “Bientôt l’été”.
To end the year in beauty, The Chinese Room will release their “Everybody’s gone to the Rapture” in the fourth quarter of 2012.
The full list can be consulted on the Notgames blog.
http://notgames.org/blog/releases
This page will be updated continuously. New titles and release dates have already been added, with certainly more to follow.
THE NOTGAMES INITIATIVE
Tale of Tales’ Michaël Samyn started the notgames initiative in 2010 as a gathering place for developers who wish to explore the potential of videogames as a creative medium, beyond the confines of conventional game design. Notgames is not a category but rather an invitation, a challenge, a design method. The members of its community have already produced several titles that did not pass unnoticed. Next to the authors and work mentioned above, Frictional Games created multiple award winning “Amnesia: The Dark Descent”, Krystian Majewski is the author of recently released “Trauma”, Erik Loyer produced the iPad hit “Strange Rain”, Erik Svedäng made a big impression on the iPhone with “Kometen”, and so on.
“Everyone with an interest in developing videogames outside of the boundaries of rigid game structures is welcome on our forum,” says founder Michaël Samyn. “We prioritize quality over quantity and we are not in a hurry to grow, but we are an open community and welcome all. Our purpose is to help and support each other with the difficult task of creating without conventions to fall back on. In all peace and sincerity.”
Notgames also has a Tumblr stream, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a blog.