2015’s No Quarter Exhibition featured four new games by veteran and rising independent and experimental game developers. Exploring topics from sexuality to violence, the games debuted in Brooklyn’s DUMBO Loft, enlightening and entertaining everyone in attendance. An inherently social gathering, No Quarter 2015 had many of the best New York independent game developers rubbing elbows with the public, press, and academics alike.
To read more about the evening, check out these articles from Polygon, Unwinnable, and Technical.ly Brooklyn.
The 2015 No Quarter Games
Leah Gilliam
Lesberation: Trouble in Paradise
In Lesberation, players stack, build, and trade their cards, constructing inventive and resilient solutions to the problems faced by the game’s lesbian-seperatist communes.
A veteran filmmaker and media artist who focuses on issues of race, gender, and the materiality of technology. In 2002, her solo show Agenda for a Landscape at The New Museum deftly combined NASA rover footage with scenes from the Hudson River Valley. Leah was the Director of Projects and Community Catalyst at gamelab’s Institute of Play and a visiting faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
To keep up with Leah, follow her @leahatplay.
Nina Freeman
Bum Rush
Bum Rush is a frantic car combat dating sim racing game about eight college kids who all have sexy dates on the same night. Designed by Nina, coded by Emmett Butler with art by Diego Garcia and sound and music from Maxo, players race, bump, and nab dates while trying to get home first to claim the dorm for some private time.
A Nina Freeman is a level designer at Fullbright in Portland, Oregon. She is working on their current game, Tacoma. In her personal work, she is most often making autobiographical vignette games. She worked as a designer on IGF nominee “how do you Do It?” and IGF Student Honorable Mention “Ladylike.” She designed the recently released “Cibele,” a game about an online relationship created by Star Maid Games.
You can find Nina’s work at ninasays.so, and you can follow her on Twitter at @hentaiphd.
Ramsey Nasser
الموعود Al-maw’oud (“The Promised”)
With art provided by Tim Gardner, Al-maw’oud is a 2v2 shooter where teams must balance impossible odds against powerups that come with their own burdens. In the final moments of your civilization, how will you face extinction?
A software engineer, designer, educator, and Eyebeam fellow who investigates the politics of programming languages. While at Eyebeam, he created قلب (“alb: lughat barmajeh”) a programming language entirely in Arabic that critiques the role of culture in computer science.
To see Ramsey’s latest projects, follow him @ra, or visit his website, nas.sr.
Loren Schmidt
Beads of Orange Glass
Beads of Orange Glass is a story game in which two players cooperatively create and explore a digital world together.
A designer and visual artist who powerfully wields pixelated abstraction to create evocative worlds and relationships. Their 2009 game Star Guard distills retro platforming into a stark neon world swimming in danger.
Follow Loren @LorenSchmidt, and view a collection of their other projects on their website.