LudoNarraCon Announces Games and Panel Details

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Fellow Traveller announced the full lineup of over 40 exhibiting games for LudoNarraCon 2020 on Tuesday morning. LudoNarraCon is a global digital festival held on Steam to celebrate narrative video games. This year, the festival will run from April 24 to April 27 and will be available for free to everyone.

LudoNarraCon 2020 has been months in the making. Fellow Traveller has said they’re proud to be able to offer a unique opportunity for indie developers despite the current global pandemic. Following the cancellation of GDC and other popular gaming conventions, Fellow Traveller reopened applications, doubling the size to over 40 exhibiting games. The festival will also include panels, although more panels are still to be confirmed before the event begins.

“With a COVID-19 vaccine 12-18 months away, we need to accept as an industry that it will be a very long time before we get back to large physical conventions and it’s almost unimaginable that any will happen this year,” said Chris Wright, Managing Director at Fellow Traveller. “With LudoNarraCon, we hope to bring a convention experience to your home, wherever you are, and provide an opportunity for indie developers to shine. We’re also keen to help others create similar festivals in the coming months and happy to share what we’ve learned.”

Organized by Fellow Traveller, an independent games label focused on narrative games, the first LudoNarraCon debuted in 2019 as a pioneering event. It replicated many aspects of conventions like PAX or Eurogamer Expo, but through a digital format hosted on the Steam platform.

At LudoNarraCon, developers exhibit by streaming behind the scenes content to their Steam store pages. Many will provide a demo, downloadable only for the duration of the event. Plus, more than 50 narrative games will be on sale to celebrate the festival.

Additionally, a series of panel discussions will be streamed on the central “theatre” stream.

Media are able to apply for a press pass, get early access to media-only demos, press assets, and contacts for each participating exhibitor.

The entire event is tied together on a special LudoNarraCon page on Steam, which will use Steam’s new events functionality. It will be free to attend and free to exhibit.

Exhibitors

Here is the full list of current LudoNarraCon 2020 exhibitors:

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs– Strange Scaffold
Backbone– Eggnut / Raw Fury
Beholder 2– Alawar
Best Friend Forever– Starcolt
Beyond the Veil– Sun’s Shadow Studios
Coda– GoodbyeWorld Games
Coffee Talk– Toge Productions
Curious Expeditions 2– Maschinen-Mensch
Do Not Feed the Monkeys– Alawar
Frog Detective 2– Grace Bruxner, Thomas Bowker
Garden Story– Picogram / Rose City Games
Lost Words: Beyond the Page– Sketchbook Games
N1RV Ann-A– Yrsbd / Sukeban Games
Nowhere Prophet– Sharkbomb Studios / No More Robots
Over the Alps– Stace Studios
Ring of Fire– Far Few Giants
Roki – Polygon Treehouse
Still There– Iceberg Interactive
Sunless Skies– Failbetter Games
The Flower Collectors– Mipumi Games
Wide Ocean Big Jacket– Turnfellow
Boyfriend Dungeon – Kitfox Games
Chinatown Detective Agency – General Interactive Co.
Eliza – Zachtronics
Genesis Noir – Feral Cat Den / Fellow Traveller
Heaven’s Vault – inkle
Hypnospace Outlaw – Tendershoot / No More Robots
In Other Waters – Jump Over The Age / Fellow Traveller
Mutazione – Die Gute Fabrik / Akapura Games
Neo Cab – Chance Agency / Fellow Traveller
Not Tonight – Panic Barn / No More Robots
Paradise Killer – Kaizen Game Works / Fellow Traveller
She Dreams Elsewhere – Studio Zevere
Solace State – Vivid Foundry
Sometimes Always Monsters – Vagabond Dog / Devolver
Suzerain – Torpor Games / Fellow Traveller
Tangle Tower – SFB Games
Telling Lies – Drowning a Mermaid Productions / Annapurna Interactive
The Church in the Darkness – Paranoid Productions / Fellow Traveller
Wayward Strand – Ghost Pattern
Welcome to Elk – Triple Topping
Yes, Your Grace – Brave At Night / No More Robots

Panels

Below is the full list of confirmed panels and participants. More panels will be confirmed prior to the festival as well.

Creating Emotional Touchstones in Emergent Narratives
- Matthew Farber, Sande Chen, Kimberly Unger, Juliana Loh
  - Games have a unique ability to establish empathy between a player and a world and characters, but game players don’t always follow the path the narrative lays out for them. This panel discusses how designers and storytellers can build in empathic elements that can be found and engaged with even when the larger narrative gets delivered out of order.
Cultural Dissonance: Avoiding Bugs in Cultural Understanding
- Mohammad Fahmi, Oli Clarke Smith, Fernando Damas
  - Three developers from three different parts of the world discuss their experience and lesson in making a narrative heavy game set in the United States with a heavy influence from Japanese media.
Emergent Narrative VS. Traditional Narrative
- Daniele Giardini, Glen Pawley, Pietro Polsinelli
  - Daniele Giardini (aka Demigiant) is both a comic and game writer/artist – and a coder, game designer, UI/UX lover, tools developer: yes, sometimes he feels a little overwhelmed. He wrote Still There (for which he also developed the writing tools), drew Football Drama, made DOTween, Goscurry, etc. He likes deranged perspectives, but he doesn’t have a cat anymore.
  - Glen Pawley is the developer of Star Dynasties, a sci-fi empire management strategy game with a procedurally generated narrative of human drama and feudal politics. Trained as a software engineer, he has a long history of building complex systems and is putting that to use in designing an emergent narrative engine of the life stories of the nobility in a decaying human civilization.
  - Pietro Polsinelli is a game writer, designer and developer. He created Football Drama and is now working on Roller Drama, both sports games blending narrative and management. He also works on applied games and is a researcher on “games for health” at Milan Bicocca University.
Evolution of Game Narrative
- Brenda Romero, Steve Meretzky, Brian Moriarty, Clara Fernandez-Vara, Richard Rouse III
  - This panel brings together some well traveled game writers and narrative designers to talk about how game stories have changed over the years and how they’re likely to evolve in the future. With decades of experience from text adventures (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) to graphical adventures (Loom) to horror shooters (The Suffering) to strategy games (Jagged Alliance and the upcoming Empire of Sin), our lineup of panelists have worked in many different genres that embraced narrative in many unique ways. Join us for this panel and hear us explore where game narrative will go next!
Holistic Storytelling
- Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, Thomas Jones
- The creators of upcoming indie game Röki (Polygon Treehouse) discuss their approach to interactive narrative, namely ‘holistic storytelling’. Video games are an interactive medium and a script is just one of the tools we have at our disposal to craft stories.
Let’s Do The Time Warp Again: How To Keep The Narrative Interesting In A Game Built On Repetition
- Nick Pearce, Luis Antonio, Katie Chironis
  - Nick Pearce – Developer of The Forgotten City, a murder mystery investigation in an ancient Roman city caught in a time loop.
  - Luis Antonio – Developer of Twelve Minutes, an interactive thriller about a man trapped in a time loop.
  - Katie Chironis – Senior Game Designer at Riot and writer of Elsinore, a time-looping adventure game set in the world of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Localization and Writing: Evolving the Worlds
- Vladimir Konoplitsky, Natalia Nesterova, Anthony Jauneaud, Fabio “Kenobit” Bortolotti
  - Game writers and localizers will tell dramatic stories how cultural and language specifics challenged their work. How game worlds are transformed on the way from original language to localization. We will see what translation and writing have in common, and how narrative games evolve real life cultures through localization.
Narrative Design: The Secret Sauce of Game Storytelling
- Jim Rossignol, Chella Ramanan, Tori Schafer, Sarah Longthorne, Antony de Fault
  - Ever considered that writer and narrative designer are separate disciplines? What makes them unique? Join us in exploring this topic with the brains behind beloved video game stories!
On Essay Games: The Diary, The Documentary, and The Satire
- David Cribb, Nathalie Lawhead, and Angela Washko. Moderated by Nicholas O’Brien.
  - As video games communities continue to mature and nurture pockets of avant-garde exploration, this panel investigates emergent practices of game development/design called “essay games.” Similar to the essay film and video genres of avant-garde cinema, essay games explore how the medium can tell critical, research-based narratives about political, cultural, or interpersonal themes. This discussion will outline three primary narrative design strategies that distinguish essay games from traditional independent games: the diary, the documentary, and the satire.
Personal Storytelling in Games
- Tanya Kan, Miriam Verburg, Gabby DaRienzo, Paloma Dawkins
  - Indie games can have the flexibility and innovation to embed many personal tales from their lead creators. These game writers and creators discuss how their lived experiences lead them to write and direct games that are unflinchingly about their passions, perspectives, and questions in life. Join us on a panel discussion about how indie game creators have combined art, interaction, and storytelling to create resonant and unique journeys. From tales of belonging, to finding art in unusual places, these stories are sure to inspire.