Well, it looks like we’ve finally left the long Toronto winter behind, and we’re experiencing the first of the warm weather. Horrible, isn’t it? The sun blinds you, gives you headaches, makes your skin burn, and worst of all, with the “lovely weather,” you suddenly have no excuse to hide away in your home and play games like you’ve been doing all winter. Well, you can always go outside and bring your mobile phone or 3DS, so it’s not all bad. And while you’re out, there’s plenty of game related events you can experience, too

Don’t forget to check out the Toronto Gaming Calendar, now available on our homepage, which will be updated as more events are announced throughout the month. (Remember, the calendar can also be added to your googlecal.) Note only the events marked with an asterisk are Hand Eye events — for the rest, we’re just signal boosting for this amazing community.

 

Toronto Game Events

Friday, May 1- Sunday, May 3: The Tenth Toronto Independent Game Jam, or TOJam, an annual game-making marathon. Registrations are closed.

Saturday, May 2: TAAFI Animation Arts Job Fair, connecting animation, gaming and visual effects students with job opportunities.

Wednesday, May 6: DMG’s May Speakers Social + FIGHT! Launch Party

Thursday, May 7: PanelScapes opening party, an exhibit of new comics + virtual reality projects.

Thursday, May 7: The Tour Guide: A Playful Fiction by Jim Munroe is being launched at the AGO’s First Thursday event.

Saturday, May 9: Bit Bazaar 5, A celebration of independent games, comics and good food, featuring a generous helping of all three.

* Saturday, May 9 – Sunday, May 10: Comics vs Games at Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2015, with 30 games and their creators — many from out of town.

Thursday, May 14: Bitmaker Labs is doing a free Introduction to Game Development.

* Friday, May 15 – Saturday, May 16: Wavelength is doing a two night music show at Handlebar in Kensington, and Hand Eye is curating games out on the patio for it.

Saturday, May 16 – Sunday, May 17: Enthusiast Gaming Live: A whopping 18 tournaments will have players battling it out in this 60,000-square foot grassroots eSports event.

Tuesday, May 19: iLunch 14.2 – Building A Video Game Company, A lunch series providing skills development and networking opportunities to interactive digital media producers and those in other sectors, featuring speakers from PixelNAUTS, Snowed In Studios and more.

Friday, May 22: Dames Throwing Axes, a literal axe-throwing event. Yeah, it’s not a videogame, but c’mon, axe throwing.

Saturday, May 23: DiscoTech 2 (Discovering Technologies) A social-justice themed event about tech skills-sharing, focusing on all the building blocks needed to make indie games.

Friday, May 29 – Sunday, May 31: DMG’s Gym Jam, a game jam focused on multiplayer sports action.

Local Game Releases

Noodles, pictured above, exclusive to the Canadian iTunes store, is a cute little puzzle game developed by Toronto local Michael Busheikin.

Say When is an interactive fiction sci-fi/horror/fairy tale game game by Hand Eye alumni Kaitlin Tremblay. It can get a bit intense, but if you’re up for it, have a look here.

MINKOMORA is difficult to describe, but it’s an adventure about a small colourful character exploring a big colourful world. This free browser game from DMG alumni merrit kopas and Joni Kittaka is worth a look for its uniqueness alone.

Toronto Folks In The Media

PAX East may be over, but Golden Gear’s Fate Tectonics is still getting eyeballs from its showing at the convention, like this video at A List Daily.

With its Steam and Xbox One release dates drawing near, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (pictured above) by Asteroid Base received an exclusive special look from Destructoid.

Feminist Frequency has begun a new series focusing on positive portrayals of women in video games. Their first episode talks about Capybara Games’ 2011 release Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. Watch it here!

Kill Screen has a writeup about Femmepocalypse, a game made during one of Dames Making Games’ Jams.

For some interesting real-world gaming, check out this write-up in Make about DMG Member Daniele Hopkins and Kyle Duffield’s laser-dodging game, L.E.A.P.

Help Wanted

If you’re a creative writer interested in new frontiers for the medium, interactive storytelling experience Massively is currently searching for a writer to help create compelling interactive fiction of almost every genre. If you’re interested, read more about it here.

TV Ontario is currently looking for the following candidates: 2 x Senior Web & Game Developer, 1 x 2D Game Artist / Designer (job posting pending), 1 x Web Infrastructure Architect, 1 x Quality Assurance Analyst.

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