Congratulations, you made it through Halloween with your sanity intact. Now, it’s time to face a greater terror: Christmas shopping. With Black Friday happening this month, November is the perfect time to think about gifting some games to the special people in your life. And if you need a break from the shopping, you can check out the free events happening in the indie game scene in Toronto. 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 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

*Saturday, November 1: The Canzine indie arts fair includes an Artsy Games Incubator exhibition

Wednesday, November 5: Assassin’s Creed Unity Launch Celebration

*Saturday, November 8: Wordplay 2014, a festival of writerly games

Wednesday, November 26: The November Torontaru

Friday, November 28: Arcade U

Local Game Releases

Created during Dames Making Games’s Ad Hoctober game jam, spooky arcade game Candy for Satan is available for Windows user to play, free!

Kaitlin Tremblay has finished her collaborative interactive story compilation, Lights out, Please. It combines traditional ghost stories with modern, user-submitted tales to scare the reader while making them think.

Home is a pixel-based adventure game created by Benjamin Rivers, a horrifying murder mystery with an ending you decide. The PS4 version of the game saw its release a few short days before Halloween, but you can enjoy the scares all year round.

 

Toronto Folks In The Media

Game Curious co-ordinator Sagan Yee created a marvellous animated tribute to the SNES RPG Earthbound (pictured above), which then received coverage from Kotaku.  

The Justice Points video games podcast had an episode featuring Dames Making Games members Jennie Faber and Cecily Carver. Check it out here!

 

Special Announcements

Attention to any indie devs looking for government funding for their projects. There’s only a few days left to apply for the Toronto Arts Council’s Grants to Media Artists for 2014. Have a look here before time runs out!

Haphead, a videogame themed cyberpunk web series written/created by Hand Eye Society co-founder Jim Munroe, is Kickstarting its post-production. Find out more here.

IndieCade, the International Festival of Independent games has come and gone for 2014. But before they left, they awarded Toronto studio Metanet Software with a special recognition award for N++. Read Metanet’s statement here.

The Ontario Media Development Corporation is hiring! The OMDC provides opportunities for Ontario’s cultural media industries (including book publishing, film and television, magazine publishing and music industries, and most relevant to us, interactive digital media) to create new products, access new markets and improve market readiness. While a contract position, this is a great gig that calls for a rock-solid administrator. Those interested can apply here.

 

Gamemaking Help Offered/Wanted

The video game development club at Don Mills Collegiate Institute has been running for three years, bringing together a pool of talented and passionate students to promote and teach game development, learn and design together, and attempt ambitious projects. We are trying to get speakers from the game development scene in Toronto to come in and talk about their personal and professional experience, give career advice, teach industry methods and standards, If you are interested, contact Hussain Jasim (hussainmkj@gmail.com).

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