Ausstellerverzeichnis – PLAY AUSTRIA

1700

1700 is a computer game that thematizes the storming of the Pizzeria Anarchia, an occupied building in Vienna. In July 2014, the decision was made to storm the building with 1,700 operatives (later corrected to the number 1,452), with a tank engaging in battle with nineteen punks and moving level by level through the barricaded floors, as if in a game. The sheer abundance of police wandering around the building in a rather clueless and aimless way was rendered using mechanisms of the old classic video game Lemmings, for the obstacles in the game 1700 primarily emerge through planning errors on the part of the police. The game was released on the Internet free of charge and already had over 10,000 players during its first day online.

Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

The new master’s programme Game Studies and Engineering at the Alpen Adria University of Klagenfurt is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Department of English and the Institute of Information Technology. It deals with the technical as well as analytical and ethical aspects of video games and other kinds of games. The focus of the curriculum is on the multifold nature and contextualization of games with regard to an array of different but interconnected areas of investigation.

Atoll

Atoll is based on the development of an archive for artistic production in the context of computer games as medium of representation. With a desktop computer, mobile device, or VR unit, the content can be viewed as a browser game. This allows gamers to explore islands – namely, geographically delimited areas within the game world that are respectively designed by a group of art and design creatives. The official release of the archive will take place at PLAY AUSTRIA.

Black Cell

Black Cell turns virtual reality into virtual adventures! The focus on an unfamiliar gaming experience, exciting atmosphere, and fantastic sound design make games by Black Cell enchanting experiences in a hitherto unknown way. All of these experiences allow players to do things that would be impossible in real life. Discover, play, and let us surprise you! Moreover, Black Cell will speak about their journey into the medical sector and about the role that virtual reality can play in the treatment of ADHD for kids.

Broken Rules

Since 2009, Broken Rules has been developing unusual computer games which captivate with their unique artistic style and with themes that go far beyond common game clichés. In the current project Old Man’s Journey, for example, players experience the moving life story of an elderly man. The team working with Felix Bohatsch, Clemens Scott, Jan Hackl, Peter Vorlaufer, and Martin Pichlmair has won many international prizes with its games, which have been released on iOS, PC, Nintendo, and Android platforms.

Causa Creations

Causa Creations has devoted itself to the development of high-quality indie games. The idea is not only to represent reality in an artistic way through their games, but also to provide an opportunity to interact with this reality in the game setting. They develop games for organizations and companies that wish to communicate their concerns and issues with the help of games – such as a fundraiser by NGOs or even as another facet of an awareness campaign for a donation drive.

Deserving Life

Deserving Life is a room-scale VR escape game for the HTC Vive. You wake up bound in chains within an unfamiliar house. Can you manage to solve all the riddles in order to forge your path to freedom?

Donau-Universität Krems

The Center for Applied Game Studies is concerned with issues related to the transfer of current research results in the field of interactive visual media to professional practice. Special consideration is given to applications in media and game design as well as education and training. The range of courses includes the master’s programmes Game Studies, Transmedia Design & Gamification, Action-Oriented Media Education, MediaGameEducation, and Game Based Media & Education. Furthermore, the Center boasts an extensive research and development branch.

doorfortyfour

doorfortyfour is a two-person indie game studio based in Vienna, Austria. The studio was founded in December 2013 by Miriam and Marc Egli, behind Door 44. The developer team and married couple has been sharing office and home space with conviction ever since. They have been working on the debut game MarZ Rising since December 2014. It is a tactical base defence game, in which the player guides his crew through twenty breathtaking missions to Mars and slowly solves riddles about the undead in the process.

enibolas

Sabine Harrer aka enibolas conducted research as part of her doctoral work and dissertation on the topic of grief and the experience of loss in video games. This led to the creation of Jocoi, a game that translates the symbolic imagery of a group of grieving women into video game dynamics. Harrer is also involved in the Copenhagen Game Collective, which is a collective of game developers that organizes cultural games events in Scandinavia, in addition to smaller mixed-media and folk gaming projects. The tablet drawing game Cunt Touch This was created by members of the CPH Game Collective and broaches the subject of desire and gratification.

esports.wien

esports.wien shows the best that e-sports has to offer, live and with good friends. Since 2011, over fifty events have been organized under the name BarCraft Austria – and, as of 2017, now esports.wien – especially live broadcasting of professional e-sports competitions in bars, cinemas, and open-air venues. What is more, the “esports.wien Meetups” represents a regular opportunity for networking among Austrian organizers and a competition meeting point for the community.

Fachhochschule Salzburg Gmbh

MultiMediaArt stands for cross-media concepts and design, but also for a combination of graphics, moving images, interaction, and audio within a single degree programme. After completing basic coursework, the students pursuing a bachelor’s degree specialize in media design, film, computer animation, or audio. Other focus areas are motion graphics, game design, photographic and filmic documentation, conception and design thinking, or media scenography. In the master’s programme, the students conceptualize and design cross-media innovation projects. The curriculum is oriented to the typical project phases: idea development, concept, design, implementation, and publication. While earning their master’s degree, students can specialize in the field of management and production in the creative industry.

Fachhochschule St. Pölten

St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences is a locally rooted, globally networked organization that stands for quality higher education in the Departments of Rail Technology and Mobility, Health, Computer Science and Security, Media and Digital Technologies, Media and Economics, and Social Sciences. Connections to thematic areas in teaching and research make interdisciplinary scientific findings, products, and solutions possible for the business sector and society. Around 2,600 students enrolled in seventeen academic programmes and in numerous continuing education courses receive a practically oriented academic education.

FH Oberösterreich

The Department of Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Hagenberg focuses on the areas of interactive media, games, animation, the Web, and multimedia. In addition to the bachelor’s programme Media Technology and Design, the university offers master’s degrees in Interactive Media and the Digital Arts. The department is also involved with the research group Playful Interactive Environments (PIE), which explores the topics of animation and games. In additional to the educational programmes and research activities, the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria will present two student projects at two separate stands.

foreverloops

Being playfully creative and productive – foreverloops is a digital construction game for composing music and rhythmic video clips. Playful creatives and creative players construct musical clockwork, experimenting, discovering, composing, and performing. foreverloops, which has not yet been released, is both game and production software at once. Gefördert durch aws impulse XL des BMWFW, abgewickelt durch die aws

Game Gestalt

Our mission: to challenge the conventional perceptions of what games can do – and to produce tangible evidence of our ideas. Our works cover everything from amusing, therapeutic, serious, and social to academic. Examples include the award-winning game Papermint and the therapy game Aquamorra. Company founder Lev Ledit trains half of the country’s future game designers at nine Austrian universities.

GameDev Graz

GameDev Graz is a group with varied talents that has come together to pursue their passion: developing video games. After determining that many people share this interest area, they decided to found a non-profit organization, which makes it easier to attain their goals. They have set out to create a lively and supportive developer scene for both aspiring and established game developers. The goal is to share knowledge with each other, to network, and to collaborate.

Games Institute Austria

The Games Institute Austria is interested in the use of games and playful approaches in the context of education, consulting, or communications with the aim of advantageously implementing the essence of the game in these areas. Games are social and communicative; complex problems can be simulated in an especially plausible and motivating way. This leads to countless application possibilities outside of gaming culture, which we as the Games Institute intend to tap into.

Get The Eggs

Get the Eggs is a four-player local multiplayer game for the personal computer. Four gamers try to steal eggs from the nests of other players. Whoever has the most eggs at the end wins the game.

Giggly Mill Productions

Since its founding in the year 2012, Giggly Mill Productions has mainly stood for physics-based games in the Android universe. The focus of development is placed on producing independent concepts and ideas; copies of already widely disseminated game mechanics and processes are not part of the concept. Of course games should be attractive to the players, but in the ideal case they will also prove enjoyable and interesting during the development phase.

globalstats.io

globalstats.io is an online platform devoted to ranking lists in computer games. It offers a simple, quick, and cost-free solution to integrating high scores in games, with the aim of enhancing replay value and soliciting new users for the game. The platform is independent and the API can be applied to all established systems and game engines

gold extra

The Austrian artists’ group gold extra produces, curates, and initiates projects in the interstitial spaces between game, performance, and hybrid media. gold extra is a network of artists, including visual artists, directors, programmers, and performers. The idea gives rise to the format – a constant researching of innovative artistic forms of expression plays a key role in the artistic work of gold extra.

Goliath VR

Goliath VR is a local multiplayer VR game that offers one player the opportunity to use the body of another player as an expanded level. Goliath and David are both trapped in a lava cave and must work together in order to escape. Therefore, Goliath must make his body available as bridges and platforms, so that David can safely reach the keys needed to open the gate to freedom.

HTL Spengergasse

The five-year professional training in Game Design at the HTL Spengergasse offers insight into the different processes involved in developing a game. Various aspects must be considered for successful game development, such as design, technology, and psychology, as well as the related fundamentals. The main curriculum areas are: fine arts, computer sciences, game programming, digital arts, character design, game design, game theory, and project management.

INEO

INEO is a virtual reality game developed by and for senior citizens. Assuming the role of an astronaut, the players must skilfully move through the space station and activate their launch capsule, which will bring them back down to earth. The game is designed to introduce this target group to modern technology. INEO provides seniors with an opportunity to engage in experiences that are no longer feasible for them in the real world.

jcstranger

Christian Baumgartner, aka jcstranger, is an independent game developer from Vienna. After having worked as a game designer in various game workshops over the course of several years, he started his own business in mid-2014 in order to fine-tune his own creations. In early 2015, his debut work, Psych, was released. With over two million downloads and worldwide app store featuring, Psych was a major success. At present, jcstranger is working on a secret project which he will present for the first time at the PLAY AUSTRIA games fair.

Klemens Strasser

Klemens Strasser from Voitsberg is a computer science student in the master’s programme at Graz University of Technology. In 2014, he started developing games on the side for various Apple platforms. The whole thing began with the quiz game Elementary Minute, which was distinguished by the Apple Design Award in the student category in 2015. Last year, the puzzle game Asymmetric entered the App Store, and soon his third game, Subwords, will follow.

Lares

Lares is an action adventure game with puzzle elements. Character design, colour theory, artificial intelligence, procedural generation, and emergent puzzle design all contributed to the game’s overall design.

Locked-IN

Locked-IN is the prototype of a first-person action puzzle game for HTC Vive. Gamers become immersed in a virtual world and must save the non-player characters (NPC) trapped there. They use lasers to protect themselves against the bugs that are destabilizing the system.

Lost in the Garden

Lost in the Garden develops games and interactive applications. The company was founded in early 2016 in conjunction with the development of the futuristic racing game LIGHTFIELD, which will be released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2017. United in the four-person team of founders (Matthias Maschek, Julia Murczek, Raimund Schumacher, Simon Wallner) is long-standing experience in the visual, interactive, and technical domain, as well as an interest in jointly working on new and interesting projects.

Mad Gear Games

Mad Gear Games arose from a group of Go gamers who met at a tournament, where they realized that they also share a passion for classic retro games. Thanks to their love of games like Megaman and Castlevania, they are trying to bring back these classics and also games with an instant fun factor. Amazing pixel art, chiptune music, and excellent playability galore!

Noizoo Games

Noizoo Games was founded in 2012 by Zsolt Marx (CEO) and Gottfried Eibner (CTO). Using the game medium, Noizoo Games fathoms areas that no one has been and researches game concepts that have never been experienced in this form – exciting combinations of genres that lead players into new worlds. The most recent one is the mobile game Dungenious, which combines a learning system with role-playing. While each player explores dungeons turn by turn and readies his figure, he also invokes his knowledge to battle hordes of monsters, all the while practising new vocabulary, compound multiplication, or even learning how to associate famous paintings with their creators.

Nonex Games

The five students that make up Nonex are presenting Click the Pic 2, an educational learning game for mobile devices. Click the Pic not only targets children and youth, who already become familiarized with technology at a young age and for whom new technologies play an important role in everyday life. It is also geared towards those individuals who are learning a new language or who want to improve or refresh their language skills. Moreover, they are presenting Shattered, a third-person action adventure PC game with high-quality graphics and handcrafted worlds.

PEW

PEW is a casual laser tag game that can be played spontaneously on your smartphone at school or college, in the office, or with random players around town. All fellow gamers nearby are shown on a map. The game requires a modular smartphone extension, which is simply inserted into the phone’s charger plug, and you’re ready to play – Plug‘n’PEW!

Phombie Flow

Stefan Grassberger & 86/60 are presenting their first game, Phombie Flow, where the handling of digital information is put to the test. Players are confronted with incoming messages and must discern and process everything relevant to work, while weeding out anything private and spam. If this is not accomplished quickly enough, the stress level rises to the point of digital overload.

Play:Vienna

Play:Vienna is Austria’s initiative for games in public space. Since 2012, they have been regularly transforming Vienna into a playground – organizing festivals and events, holding lectures and workshops, and designing games. They also offer, through the Urban Game Clinics once a month, the opportunity to test one’s own game ideas. To date, ten Journey to the End of the Night events have been organized in Vienna. Play:Vienna is part of a global network of urban game designers.

Playful Solutions GmbH

Our goals, our projects and our visions change over time, either driven by our decisions or by others. Many of these changes are too important to apply the same old solutions to a new challenge– we get stuck, or we simply don’t get the impact we want. At Playful Solutions we have the creative tools and methods for you to take on your challenges in a new and inspiring way! Our solutions use playful and targeted approaches to concept design, process support and product development. By combining groundbreaking game design techniques and coaching methods with an entrepreneurial mindset we deliver custom-made playful solutions! Our own purpose: to fuel the innovative resources of organizations and to co-create playful solutions that matter.

POLYCRUSHER

In late 2016, Atomic Pond Studios released their debut game POLYCRUSHER, a colourful multiplayer sofa spectacle, and will now be showing some of their new experiments and prototypes. Vacuum cleaners come to life and entire islands are dissected. We are full of anticipation!

Polycular

Polycular is an interactive media workshop for sophisticated claims to creativity, technological excellence, and innovation. With over twenty years of experience in the high-end segment of interactive advertising, virtual and augmented realities, and computer game development, Polycular offers innovative solutions paired with dramaturgy, storytelling, and interaction, which leads to the creation of unique and exciting experiential worlds for clients.

Pushout

Pushout is a platform game where the players have to thrust each other out of the playing field. Good reaction time and foresight are necessary in order to deal with the slippery platforms. Even experienced gamers make mistakes here, so Pushout is fun for everyone, for players and onlookers alike. Pushout was developed by Simon Reiser, a young HTL graduate in computer science.

Rarebyte OG

Rarebyte was founded in 2006 and, since then, has successfully created more than twenty-five games for all established platforms (PC, consoles, mobile, Web). On the one hand, Rarebyte provides contracting parties, in the scope of commissioned projects, with technical and creative know-how and expertise for the conceptualization, planning, programming, and designing of games. On the other hand, the ten-person team also develops their own games, such as the action adventure Seeds of Sol. Although Seeds of Sol is still currently in the development phase, Rarebyte is already open to a lively exchange with the community, which can follow and influence the development process by way of regular development streams on Twitch and short documentaries on YouTube.

rebuilders

The game rebuilders for Android and iOS deals with a mix of aspects from the genres multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), basebuilder, and tower defense. The player recruits crew members for vehicles that can be freely contrived and rigged up, which are then used to compete with and against each other. The story of rebuilders is set in a world succumbing to climate change, where the inhabitants of the planet come together to fight for the sustainable rebuilding of civilization.

Respawn eSports Bar

As Austria’s first and only e-sports bar, Respawn associates gaming with going out. Since its opening in June 2016, the bar has quickly established itself as a home base for the local scene and a venue for international events. Taking place daily in the bar are competitions and also the live broadcasting of e-sports events like League of Legends, Data 2, CS:GO, and many more. Special highlights are public showings like The International or the League of Legends Worlds.

Retroguru

Retroguru is one of the few game workshops still actively devoted to the development of new games for systems that are no longer commercially active or that are considered exotic. With the nine games developed to date, they represent the line of good old freeware games, usually in the style of 16-bit graphics. The predominant genres are jump ‘n’ run and puzzle games. Occasionally, there are also physical productions that are simply sold by partner organizations without profit.

Sad Hombres

Sad Hombres offers exciting insights into the procedures and developmental processes of their newest game Navalon.

Shedeng Shen

Shedeng Shen is a 2.5D platform game with three playable levels.

skodone

Benjamin Wahl, an indie developer and multimedia artist from Linz, is a student of time-based media at the University of Art and Design Linz. He is interested in games, virtual realities, and installations with various media and tries to find an alternative or artistic point of access to his works. Hushed Escape is a voice-controlled stealth game about escaping from captivity and oppression. The game was developed during the Global Game Jam 2017 and is currently in the alpha phase.

Spinnortality

James Patton has always developed games, but it has only been during the last four years after his move to Vienna that he has been intensively working on development in a one-person team. He realizes projects that spark his interest and inspire reflection. Spinnortality, his current project, is a cyberpunk simulation and strategy game. His former projects include The Gods Are Hungry, a game about assumptions and religion, and Masques and Murder, a feminist and murderous Renaissance interpretation of the dating sim genre.

Sproing Interactive Media GmbH

Sproing is Austria’s leading developer of computer and video games, and since 2014 also a game publisher. As one of the few independent studios, Sproing focuses on the development of multiplatform games and has completed, since 2001, more than sixty games for various platforms. Building on this experience, in the year 2010 the company started moving up to become one of the biggest players in free-to-play games. Current project include: Panzer Tactics HD, Asterix and Friends, Quarantine, and Nonstop Chuck Norris.

stillalive studios GmbH

Since 2013, stillalive studios has been developing core PC games in Innsbruck. The team has meanwhile grown to include fourteen people. The focus of the company rests on dynamic, technically sophisticated, and visually appealing indie core games for PC and Mac. The team has past experience working with the most modern technology, including VR, eye tracking, brain computer interfaces, motion tracking, gesture recognition, and voice recognition. To date, the team has successfully released two large steam games – Son of Nor and Bus Simulator 16 – as well as several other smaller games and application for different platforms and various fields.

Stuffed Wombat

Stuffed Wombat is really named Josh and sets out to make small, innovative, and entertaining computer games. In 2017, he has been creating a game per month. He is inviting us to play his nine games on two PCs at the fair. Also, he is presenting (and giving away) the first edition of the Trashzine, a small magazine devoted to smaller game developers. He helps budding developers by offering tips to the online resources that have helped him in his DIY training.

T.I.M.

Tremendous Interactive Media (T.I.M.) has been working on their first game –Zeronov, a 2D puzzle platformer for Android smartphones – for about a year now. The objective of the game is to break into a deserted building with the help of a drone in order to obtain information about aliens that has been kept top secret by the government.

Team Phoenix

Team Phoenix is made up of seven master’s students from various fields of study at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg. Some of these students have already worked on joint projects together. In the case of Phoenix, their largest and last collaborative student project, they aim to offer gamers a challenging and exciting VR coop game.

Technische Universität Graz

For many years now, the Faculty of Computer Science at Graz University of Technology has been focusing its teaching and research activity on the fields of virtual reality, computer graphics, and game development. In the area of game research, various key topics are explored, with current topics including, for example, intelligent and dynamic game design, virtual reality experiences, games user research, and artificial intelligence. In the scope of the Computer Science and Software Development degree programme, students are acquainted with these key areas through coursework and project-based activities.

TU Wien

In the master’s programme Visual Computing at Vienna University of Technology, numerous students are trained each year in the field of computer graphics, especially in 3D programming and game programming. Here, the focus is placed on technical and computer-graphics-related aspects, which still reflects one of the most important areas in the development of a computer game. At PLAY AUSTRIA, we offer insight into the curriculum and show student works, especially computer games and demos

Waltzing Atoms

Waltzing Atoms aims to playfully spark an interest in the natural sciences in youth. The app of the same name for chemistry, supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, is already being used in 270 schools. At PLAY AUSTRIA, there will be a world premiere: the new, mobile multiplayer game for classes called Waltzing Numbers will be tested live. In the game, the entire class must solve a puzzle of logic by working together. The boundaries between the digital and real worlds become blurred, and mathematics suddenly becomes enthralling.

Weaving Tides

As a boy riding on a weaver, the player flies through an utterly woven world. This world is torn open in many places and is in danger of collapse. The weavers are a blend of stingray and dragon with an endless, ribbon-like tail. Through the artfully woven flight of the weaver, the gamer can reconnect torn spots and thus protect the world and its inhabitants from imminent decline. The team, comprised of Verena Demel, Klaus Fehkührer, Michael Huber, and Sebastian Rangger, have previously worked on NIVA and YoKaisho.

WIDESHOT Design GmbH

WIDESHOT is a design studio whose work navigates built architecture and virtual worlds. The portfolio of the studio is broadly diversified – including video games, motion pictures, theme parks, and toy manufacturers – and distinguishes WIDESHOT as experts for all kinds of entertainment design. WIDESHOT was founded in 2010 and now has a team of twenty-two employees. In addition to many other activities, the company has successfully worked on projects like Independence Day: Resurgence, Hitman, Assassin’s Creed, Max Payne III, and 2012.

with Who?

Josef Who? studied architecture in Vienna and Berlin. After specializing in the spatiality of digital games, he became a level designer at the Vienna-based indie workshop Broken Rules. At the same time, he took up curatorial work for the gaming events collective zamSpielen. For several years now, he has also been an organizational member of SUBOTRON and has taught at Austrian educational institutions. He has developed and released numerous games over the years with a variety of cooperation partners – from indie games to sociocritical and experimental games or exhibition games / interactive media art installations. Josef Who? is presenting his project collaborations and his work as games curator for zamSpielen, some in playable form, some as documentary material.

Zeppelin Studio

Zeppelin Studio was founded in Vienna by two students of the beautiful art of game engineering in the year 2013. With their award-winning pilot project Schein as a stepping stone, they have succeeded in establishing themselves in the international games industry. The company is focused on games with substance, where story, gameplay, art, and sound are harmoniously interwoven.

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Lost in the Garden

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