December’s here, and your level of sanity depends on one question only: Gotten your Christmas shopping done yet? If you have, congratulations, play some games on the couch while your friends run around in a panic. And if not…play some games on your couch in denial. Or go to the Bit Bazaar and pick up some last-minute game related swag. Either way, there’s lots happening this month, if you’re up for braving the snow. Fortunately, a lot of it’s online if you aren’t. Don’t forget to check out the Toronto Gaming Calendar, which will be updated as more events become announced throughout the month. (Remember, the calendar can also be added to your googlecal.) Note none of the events this month are Hand Eye events — we’re just signal boosting for this amazing community.

Toronto Game Events

December 2, 2014: The TO Tech Bash, uniting digital and technological artists from all across the city.

December 6, 2014: The Bit Bazaar (pictured above), Bento Miso’s market for indie games, comics, and good food.

December 18, 2014: DMG’s Game Development with Unity for Beginners.

Local Game Releases

Rollers of the Realm’s premise is fascinatingly simple: a medieval-themed pinball battle game. The Phantom Compass-developed title can be found on Steam here.

Frail Shells is a first-person shooter from Toronto dev Taylor Bai-Woo for Windows, Mac, or Linux. It’s a unique experiment that focuses on what happens to a soldier after the mission has ended. It can be downloaded here.

Utopia, a Twine game by Charlotte Ashley made in the Artsy Games Incubator, asks the question: Who would you start a new world with? Play it here.

Toronto Folks In The Media

The Canadian Video Game Awards are over, and you can read the full list of winners at the link. Toronto studios Vagabond Dog and Drinkbox Studios walked away with awards for Always Sometimes Monsters and Guacamelee. Read the Financial Post’s coverage here.

It seems WordPlay 2014 has gotten people thinking, if this piece from the Canadian Science Fiction Review is any indication. Another writeup can be found here, at Tilt at Windmills.

Motherboard takes a look at Toronto hacker space Site3 here, outlining their live game installations revolving around Tetris and Street Fighter, among other things.

13AM Games, creators of Runbow, were interviewed by Nintendo for their involvement with IndieCade 2014. Have a look here.

The Maker Faire, which featured custom games and technology at the Toronto Reference Library, got ink in the Toronto Star.

An oldie but a goodie: Toronto devs DrinkBox hosted a post-mortem on the development of their hit game, Guacamelee. IGDA has posted a video of the talk, and it’s worth a look by any hopeful designer.

 

Special Announcements

Are you a lady game developer with dreams of making it to the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next March? If you’re a student, low income, freelance, or retired, then the Dames Making Games Scholarship program could be able to help you out. Read more here.

Until December 12, 2014, Team Vector invites you to submit to its festival programming. Vector 2015 will take place from February 19 to 22, 2015, in Toronto. They’re also taking submissions for games and interactive media for the open-source Gamebuino platform, which will be exhibited at events in Canada and Europe in 2015. If you’re interested, have a look here.

 

That’s all for now! If there’s any events, Toronto games news, new releases, or rad media coverage happening in the new year, don’t hesitate to pass it along to Anthony via email or to @HandEyeSociety on Twitter.