On May 3, 2013 the NYU Game Center celebrated its fourth annual No Quarter Exhibition, a gallery showcase featuring exclusive commissions from established and emerging independent game developers. Held in the Game Center’s old home of 721 Broadway, the event showcased games From Bennett Foddy, Nikita Mikros and Josh DeBonis, Sophie Houldon, and Matthew LoPresti. The Game Center also teamed up with Attract Mode for the first time, creating a series of posters based on previous No Quarter games.
Bennett Foddy
Bennet Foddy’s Speed Chess
A sixteen player real-time chess game. Check out a brief video about the game on Kotaku here.
From Curator and Game Center professor Charles Pratt‘s notes on the evening: “Bennett Foddy’s Speed Chess is a take by the eponymous, legendary independent game designer of QWOP on what could be called the ur-game of western civilization. Foddy brings the elder game of Chess into the traditions of the New Arcade movement by expanding the number of players and greatly increasing the speed of the game. The result is a pell-mell; a beautiful chaos that shifts in and out of ordered play, bringing forward an aspect of the ancient art of war that even the world’s most famous war game doesn’t properly examine.”
Bennett is also a faculty member here at the Game Center teaching five courses on all things game design. For more information on “the fastest game of chess in the world,” including a free download, visit Bennett’s site, foddy.net.
Nikita Mikros & Josh DeBonis
Killer Queen
Killer Queen is the world’s only 10 player game arcade game where two teams, each lead by a queen, attempt to fill their base with nectar, race their snail home, or kill off the other team’s queen first. Check out Killer Queen’s Kotaku video here. Also check out Killer Queen’s facebook to get a glimpse into the development of the massive Killer Queen 10 player cabinet.
Since the cabinet’s debut at No Quarter, Killer Queen has gone on to become something of an indie-arcade-e-sports phenomenon with cabinets across the U.S. garnering universal praise from news outlets including the New York Times, Polygon, and Kotaku. The Game also won the Developer’s Choice Award at 2013’s Indiecade was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival. For more information on Killer Queen, including cabinet locations, press coverage and rules for the original field game iteration, check out there website.
Sophia Houldon
There Shall Be Lancing
There Shall be Lancing is a two player spherical lancing game. Check out There Shall Be Lancing’s Kotaku piece here. Sophie also did an interesting write up on her blog detailing the speedy development process of the game which you can read here.
Again from Pratt’s curator notes: “The long tradition of dueling is explored by Sophie Houlden’s There Shall Be Lancing. Putting players in the shoes of two rocket-powered jousters locked in aerial combat, Houlden’s game is a duel of quick thinking and speedy counterplay. The short rounds aid in building understanding between the game’s combatants, with each trying to get into the head of the other and guess at their plans and sensibilities, bolstering a skill that is under-appreciated in most duels: empathy.”
Matthew LoPresti
Split Tree
Split Tree is a terraforming game for two players and one controller. Check out Spilt Tree on Kotaku here.
Pratt: “Matthew LoPresti is also exploring empathy with his game Split Tree, but with a strong emphasis on the interaction between players that comes through physical immediacy. While sharing a controller players work to solve a small puzzle game, whose unfolding patterns give life to a series of islands. The goal of this terraforming is to reflect not just the underlying system that LoPresti has designed, but the state of harmony or lack thereof between the players. For those that are looking there are hints of an argument being made by Tile Tree about the role of proximity and conversation in the worlds we create together.”