Craft Lake City is pleased to announce a new celebration of local game designers with Indie Game Day Presented by Meta on Sunday, August 13 at the 15th Annual Craft Lake City DIY Festival Presented By Harmons! Indie Game Day Presented by Meta happens inside the Google Fiber STEM Building during the last day of the DIY Fest. The event will give visitors the chance to meet the creatives building an underground indie game culture in Utah. Nine local studios will exhibit their latest games giving Utah’s arts community the first crack at playing the next viral hit! Craft Lake City’s Indie Game Day also highlights efforts of well-known, established local game developers such as the Gallery of Fine Hyper Art, the student work with Code Ninjas.
Craft Lake City developed the idea of the Indie Game Day in partnership with Joshua Watts of Cocky Rooster Studio, aiming to give game designers the opportunity to connect to a local audience face-to-face rather than exclusively through the app stores that host game content. At the Indie Game Day Presented by Meta, DIY Fest attendees will interact with these designers’ work, giving feedback on the spot. Watts is a storyteller at heart, and the way games bring stories to life is part of why he was drawn to indie game development.
“I believe story and experience are the best teachers we’ve got, and games are one of the best ways to harness them,” Watts says. “Great games teach people more about themselves and the world they live in. I want to create games like that, games that give you something you can bring back into the real world.”
Key art from Josh Watts’ game, Fish Combat: Accelerated
Featured local studios joining Craft Lake City in the Google Fiber STEM Building include Whatnot Studios and their game Ungrateful Birds: No Good Deed, Lotus Mountain Studios’ Narcalid, Incurable Games’ The BuildSphere ~ Rise of the Anomalbots and No Sleep Games’ Annie and the AI.
Artwork from Ungrateful Birds: No Good Deed
Artwork from The Buildsphere – Rise of the Anomalbots
Artwork from Annie and the A.I.
“Indie game design is a shining example of how folks can simply and effectively build something wildly creative without the resources of a major business; the very definition of DIY,” says Lyndi Perry, Craft Lake City’s STEM Coordinator and manager of the Google Fiber STEM Building. “They can put their own personality into it, and design around constraints to create delightful moments and engaging content that you can’t get anywhere else.
Indie Game Day at the 15th Annual Craft Lake City DIY Festival Presented By Harmons is presented in partnership with Meta. Craft Lake City is thrilled to be working with Meta, who is a proud sponsor of STEM education throughout Utah, and to put their mission of “giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” into action at the festival this year.
Indie Game Day Presented by Meta is part of the themed STEM days at the Google Fiber STEM Building, which also includes the Robot Invasion on Friday, August 11 and the STEM Action Center Pop-up Maker Fair on Saturday, August 12. Tickets to the DIY Festival are available at 24tix.com.