Hello supersonic groundhogs! It’s… Spring? We’re officially in the month of warily unzipping our coats, slush invading our footwear, and having no idea how to dress for the sometimes sunny, sometimes disgusting weather. Enjoy the mildly offensive season while heading to all these local indie game events and socials. If you’re scratching your head wondering what happened to an event that’s missing from this digest, try asking the sweaty tour guide Google Calendar. On her breaks between shifts, she posts events as they are updated.

Where to Jaunt – Toronto Game Events

Tuesday, March 1

Hand Eye Board Member Sara Grimes is holding “Rationalizing Play: A Critical Theory of Digital Gaming,” a free workshop at the University of Toronto. If lectures leave you high and dry (so very, very dry), this one will fare better; it’s part of a lecture series that’s bridging the divide between academia and the rest of the world, so the language should be more accessible than the Charlie Brown wahwahs some profs are prone to. Starts at 6 p.m., at the McLuhan Centre.

 

Friday, March 4 to Saturday, March 5

Pytyvõ Gaming is holding its first Toronto Diversity Game Jam, a free two day paper-prototyping event where participants are encourage to explore diversity themes, including ethnic representation. An optional game design workshop by Adam Clare will also be available for jammers to attend. Visible minorities are encouraged to apply. Before attending, check out their rad Code of Conduct.

 

Saturday, March 5 until April 24

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is holding their fifth digiPlaySpace, a giant exhibition of games that have children wrassling and stomping around in for several weeks. A lot of kid-friendly interactive works will be on display, as well as virtual reality, so if you’re coming by with strollers be prepared to strap on headsets and wipe down a lot of things with hand sanitizer. Spoilers: a certain raccoon racer will definitely be there.

Friday, March 11

An addition to the digest, by Hand Eye member Amanda Wong:

Co-curators Amanda Wong and Priya Rehal are bringing back LUDIC Arcade at this year’s York and Ryerson Universities end of the year graduate conference, Intersections|Cross Sections, from March 11-12. This year’s conference theme is “Re:Turns”. 2LUDIC will feature games by Gabriela Aveiro-Ojeda, Meagan Byrne and Tanya Kan. The arcade will take place at Ryerson University in the Image Arts Centre, Friday evening and all day Saturday. Program information and the registration link is available on the conference website at http://2016.iscs-conference.com. For more information about the arcade, tweet us @LUDIC_arcade or email at a10wong@ryerson.ca. For more information about the conference, email info@iscs-conference.com.

Saturday, March 12, and continuing for ever Saturday in March (March 19 and 26)

Call your momma, Game Curious is back! Hand Eye Society’s free game literacy weekly program is taking over your Saturday afternoons with six weeks of playing videogames at Ryerson University. Like a book club with buttons, Game Curious is for anyone who doesn’t identify as a gamer or with gamer culture. If you’ve ever wondered what videogames are about, if games be thought-provoking or storytelling-driven, and what indie games are doing to push diversity boundaries, this part-arcade, part-discussion program welcomes Torontonians from all backgrounds, from parents, students and older folks to artists and activists. Starts at 1 p.m., at the Student Learning Centre’s Launch Zone. If you missed the volunteer info session but still want to get involved, e-mail ken@handeyesociety.com for more info.

Want a taste of Game Curious outside of Toronto? Game Curious Montreal kicks off this month with a roundtable discussion about Women In Games as part of Montreal Joue, a multi-week festival celebrating the art of play! Hand Eye Society exec director and former Game Curious lead coordinator Sagan Yee will participate in this event, which takes place this Saturday at 10 am at Atwater Library, Bibliothèque Mordecai-Richler, 5434 Av du Parc. Game Curious Montreal is generously funded by a FiG (Feminist in Games) grant and is being organized by the Mount Royale Game Society.

Didn’t know there was a Game Curious Montreal? We’ll have more information about it in a separate post, to be written when Sagan gets back to Toronto!

 

Friday, March 18 and Saturday, March 19

The last Long Winter in Toronto refuses to budge without delivering the city two more nights of creative tomfoolery. These all-ages night bonanzas will music and artsy stuff galore for a PWYC door price. March’s Long Winter arcade will feature: the exhaustion of Russian dining in Za Vas by Brittney Oberfeld, Lee Tran, and Kimberly Koronya; polygonic rushing like rush hour never ends in Grumz by Picnic Game Labs; the mysterious but highly anticipated Art for 3 by Droqen (who made last month’s Spotlight game); symphonic puzzle-solving in XOB by Jord Farrell and Mark Sparling.

 

Thursday, March 17

The Toronto Library’s Steeles branch will be holding a Makey Makey workshop, where kid and teen participants can learn about basic programming and how to use the system as a game controller. Registration required. Starts at 2.pm., in the MultiPurpose Room.

 

Friday, March 18

The Toronto Library’s Don Mills branch will be doing Makey Makey workshops too, this time splitting up the kids’ workshop from the teens’ workshop. I don’t have the slightest clue why, but I’m hedging my bets on the library pitting them against each other for a Hunger Games-esque showdown with alligator-clipped banana swords. Registration required. Starts at 2.pm. for kids and 4 p.m. for teens, in the Auditorium.

Where to Haunt – Toronto Game Socials

Wednesday, March 2

The Dames Making Games crew are holding a drawing night, where members are invited to kick back for a low-key doodling session. Starts at Bento Miso, at 6:30 p.m.

 

Tuesday, March 8

Toronto Virtual Reality (VR)’s March meetup group is doing their usual social, along with an intriguing talk about AlterVR, which from their Youtube video appears to be like a VR chatroom where developers can talk to each other’s Rift-synchronized avatars in various environments. You can even watch Netflix or literally play D&D with your friends in it, so yeah, there goes IRL socializing. Starts at 7 p.m., at Globacore Headquarters.

 

Wednesday, March 30

Hob and nob with Toronto indie game makers and enthusiasts at Torontaru, the monthly game social. Starts at 8 p.m., at the Get Well.

 

#ICYMI

#FebAGMs – There’s something about February that makes us want to congregate and discuss auditing. The Hand Eye Society and Dames Making Games both had their annual general meetings last month, where snacks were had, programming was politely applauded, and logistics were fuddled around. Hopefully they were fun and no one had to award themselves a “This Meeting Should Have Been An Email Thread” medal. You can read our recap and minutes here.

#EGLX2016 – The Toronto gaming convention in June just announced in late April announced game dev speakers, including Rami Ismail, Kim Gibson, Jord Farrell, as well as Hand Eye members Damian Sommer and Douglas Gregory. Make us proud y’all!

#IMGANoms – Long Story, our favourite queer and trans-inclusive mobile dating simulator, was  nominated for this year’s International Mobile Gaming Awards! Good luck crew!

#LaserAnnihilation – Myself and Hand Eye Member Kai were voice actors for Electric Perfume’s laser-dodging in real life game L.E.A.P., which did its last play-run party last week, before going into hibernation. L.E.A.P. and its nefarious voices will be coming back in the summer.  

#LabTO – The workspace across from Ubisoft held their opening party last month, that included virtual reality demos and games! We also did the soft launch there for our casual game design video nights, where folks gather to chat about design and history. Expect more like that coming soon.

 

Paper Trails – Gaming in the Media

Last month’s FebMovVid (which doubled as the launch of a Laser Blast FMV game programmed and acted in by Sagan, which the entire audience played with laser pointers) got a great write-up from Yonge Street Media’s Hillary Predko! If you’d like to see programming like this collab with the Royal Cinema, let us know!

Play Dead is the new kid on the podcast block. Presented by Dork Shelf, Gabby DaRienzo takes listeners beyond and into the grave, through chats about death in videogames with developers. The first two episodes are up and include interviews with Toronto locals, Medication Meditation’s Kara Stone and Drinkbox Studios’ Augusto ‘Cuxo’ Quijano. You can listen to it on Dorkshelf or iTunes.

More earfuls: Built to Play, Ryerson’s Scope game podcast, did two episodes last month, including their grand ol’ cursed awards show. As well, Toronto Game Devs were busy as hell and did five podcast episodes in February, which includes chatting about Toronto indie game releases.

Toronto Game Devs did an interview with Creoterra’s Joe Woynillowicz where Joe chatted about turn-based RPG Darktide and what developing in Toronto is like when your team’s crisscrossing the globe.

Indie developer Kait Tremblay wrote for Vice about the beauty of platonic relationships in videogames. Yay friendship!

Femhype interviewed Tanya Kan, our February MVP, in a two-part interview. In the first interview, she talks about her background and where Solace State comes from. In the second, readers find out what games and developers inspired her.

Dorkshelf’s Eric Weiss wrote about Long Story for Playboy, which possibly has the best headline about this game ever.

Forbes covered Drinkbox’s Severed and made me want to get a PlayStation Vita even more.

Coming and Going Attractions

Thank you for Playing, a documentary about how Robert and Amy Green made a game that was a love letter to their son with cancer, needs your help! The film screened at Hot Docs last year and now needs crowdfunding for it to hit theatres in North America. You can donate at their Kickstarter, and if you’re interested in checking out the critically acclaimed game that inspired the film, you can get That Dragon, Cancer on Steam.

Last Hour Games perfected the project they started at one of Royal Ontario Museum’s game jams, and the result is Clash of the Talons, a bird of prey simulator where players spread their wings and plunge after the unfortunate little critters below.   

Warp Looter, a game for Apple devices, is a recently updated infinite space flyer from Shiny Talisman. The developers have requested for feedback if possible!

You know how the best part of Mario Kart was wrecking everybody else’s sh!#? Cel Damage HD is pretty much that, the game. Made by Finish Line Games, Cel Damage will be out on March 11. You can pre-order for XBox until then.

Barrie-based One More Stories Games is teaming up with the writer that inspired HBO’s True Blood for Shakespeare’s Landlord, interactive fiction based on Charlaine Harris’ eponymous murder mystery. You’ll have to wait until next year to play.

 

MVP

This month’s MVP is Laundry Bear Games’ Gabby DaRienzo. She’s a game artist, a User Interface/User Experience designer and Play Dead’s host.

Gabby DaRienzo is all about dirt naps, raising awareness for death positivity with her new podcast and upcoming game Mortuary Simulator (working title), where players perform the role of funeral director.

Founded with her partner Andrew Carvalho, she had some help naming her game studio.

“The name Laundry Bear Games was inspired by our friend Halina Heron, who informed us that the Swedish word for ‘raccoon’ directly translates to ‘laundry bear’… which is adorable and the best,” DaRienzo wrote to us. Which is good to know. Now we have something new to yell into the streets, standing over our upturned compost bins at 3 in the morning.

 

A Breadwinner Is You – Jobs, Gigs, And Opportunities

Are you an Indigenous woman, Two-Spirit, non-binary, or gender variant individual interested in making a videogame? Submissions for Indigicade, Dames Making Games’ and Indigenous Routes game-making incubator, are now open! Participants can expect mentoring from developers and Indigenous artists at this weekly program starting in April. No experiencing or coding expertise needed! You can read the Star’s coverage about the experience of past participants, who were Indigenous girls and teenagers.

The deadline to apply for Vector Fest, the inter-media arts festival, is TODAY at 5 p.m. It’s already passed, but if you want to know what it would have been like to submit your digital/interactive work or videogame, check out the proposal form and get ready to apply for next year!

Comics vs Games at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is looking for game submissions! Click here to learn more and fill out the exhibitor application. Submissions are due March 10 2016!

Ubisoft Toronto has a ton of openings! You’ll wanna polish that LinkedIn profile nice and shiny-like.

Icejam Games’ Toronto office is hiring a Community Manager, a User Acquisition Director, a User Interace Artist, and a vice-president of business development. And if that ain’t enough, they’ve got a fancy schmancy Starbucks corporate card. Colour us a low-fat, no dairy, double espresso shot of jealous!

For $6,000, consider teaching librarygoers about mobile app development. Maybe, oh I don’t know, slip in a little touchscreen game mechanics in there. The Toronto Public Library is looking for an Innovator-in-Residence, deadline ends on March 4.

Dork Shelf editor Eric Weiss put out a call for writers since he is doing Big and Secret Things.