We are looking forward to an upcoming exhibition in the lovely city of Basel (Isn’t that somewhere in Switzerland?): A playable version of FEIST will be shown at the Night of Museums on the 21st January 2011 in the House of Electronic Arts Basel.

The interactive exhibition showing several Swiss computer games and projects is a preview of the “Swiss Game Design” travelling exhibition and part of the Game Culture program by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

The host of the exhibition, The House of Electronic Arts Basel, is a museum of contemporary arts and music that applies and addresses new technologies. It hosts a comprehensive program of events that invite reflection on the cultural and social impact of our everyday use of media. It also fosters an ever growing in-house collection of digital artworks, holds the annual Shift Festival in October and unites [plug.in], Shift Festival and DA Collection/Store.

Florian will be there, as he is giving a talk about “Innovative Games beyond Mainstream” (did i really choose this title? I must have been drunk…) (it starts at 21:00 & 24:00) and is looking forward to meeting you.

This post is part of the FEIST 2011 New Year welcoming. Why not read the introduction first?

Over the last few months we have been working mainly on aspects that allow us to enhance the game experience and intensify the narrative dimension of the game without losing its experimental and playful nature. Really? Yes. No joking? Nope. But… Hey, come on, just read on! ok…

As you hopefully have read in the previous post, FEIST is at a point where it is being shown at various exhibitions. The version people can play there is not the final one. It’s actually some kind of a demo, that is optimized for the special context of use that comes a long with an exhibition.

The exhibition version has a short but intense playing time and gives the visitor the possibility to pick up the game at any point without getting lost. Therefore each level of the exhibition version is designed as an open playground, containing various game elements in a dense yet some what unstructured way.

We love this experimental openness and one of the crucial aspects of FEIST is doubtless its playful nature. We believe however that the true potential of FEIST lies in its combination of a dynamic and open game play and a narrative dramaturgy.

To give you an example: The Game is completely based on a physics simulation, but it should not feel like an abstract physics riddle game, of course not! – on the contrary, it should feel like a living graphic novel, where you truly empathize with its inhabitants. Therefore we describe FEIST sometimes as a “Narrative Toy”.

We think the exhibition version which only has very basic narrative elements works already quite well. We always love to watch people enjoying the game and the 2nd place in the Audience Award at Fantastic Arcade…wow! But hey, we believe there is still more in it. Much more!

So we took our time and over the last few months we have been working mainly on aspects that allow us to enhance the game experience and intensify the narrative dimension of the game without losing its experimental and playful nature: reshaping the levels, creating more striking and memorable places, increasing the variety in the setting and elements, staging the objects and especially the creatures with more dramaturgic finesse and so on…

This process is still going on. So we’d like to feature some of these in more detail when they’ve progressed further but for now just some sneak peeks at what we’ve been working on.

This post is part of the FEIST 2011 New Year welcoming. Read the introduction first!

We didn’t just dwell in the wintery forests of the Swiss mountains in 2010, contemplating the legendary flora and looking for mystical creatures hidden deep in the darkest parts. No, FEIST went on to travel around the world and took part in many exhibitions. And so all the furry beasts abandoned their snowy habitat for a while and sought some sunshiny and zippy places to air their winter pelts. Occasionally we tagged along as well and had a great time showing FEIST to the audience and meeting other designers.

And because all good things start with the letter F, two of the highlights in 2010 have definitely been the FILE Festival in July in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the Fantastic Fest in September in Austin, Texas.

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The FILE Festival, Electronic Language International Festival, is a new media arts festival in Brazil, taking place in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. It’s an important festival for the interactive art scene not only for Brazil but internationally as well.

FEIST was shown in Sao Paulo in 2010 and is scheduled to be shown in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. Here some impressions of the festival (if you have a keen eye you might spot FEIST in there as well):

All the pictures above from the FILE Festival belong to keila k.’s photostream.

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The Fantastic Fest is a genre film festival in Austin, Texas, and with its playful enthusiasm (already noticeable in the sublime Fantastic Fest poster by Mike Saputo, see below) probably one of the most interesting film festivals in the world. In 2010 they debuted Fantastic Fest Arcade to showcase independent games. FEIST was part of their Spotlight Competition and they went so far to refurbish old arcade cabinets to showcase the games!

We had a wonderful time meeting the organizers of the festival, film creators and mingling with the other game creators at the Arcade. We spent great moments with Lea Schönfelder from Ulitsa Dimitrova, Laura Smith from The Path, Justin Smith from Enviro-BEAR 2010, Craig Adams from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Paolo Pedercini from Every Day the Same Dream and many more.

At the Fantastic Arcade FEIST was awarded the Exciting World of Metrics Award and made 2nd place in the Game Developer Audience Award, yeehaw! Thank you people from Austin!

Below some impressions of the festival with images of our awesome cabinet:

Dear Friends

Yes, it’s true, the FEIST blog was far too long marked with discreetness and has not shown that many signs of life during good old 2010, nor have we spammed you extensively with our exuberant newsletter. So, what was the reason for this ruthless withdrawal of love and affection? Have we been lazy? No. Complety lost? Well… Or was it our shyness? Hm, more probably.

Anyway, because a lot of people asked us recently about the state of FEIST and some jaunty fellows even dared to query wether the furry beast is still alive, you may be glad to hear two of our new year’s resolutions:

First: Yes, FEIST is alive, hale and hearty. Sometimes even too lively, it is a vivacious and feisty creature with unbending will. But in the end 2011 will be the year of FEIST. Yes, you hear us right, in 2011 we re going to finish this beast!

Second: To make the coming year less tight-lipped and to dispel the rumor that we spent the whole last year pressing FEIST button badges (see picture below), we start off with a series of posts to welcome the New Year and to look back on the one just passed.

So we are really looking forward to an exciting and colorful new year. We hope this is true for you as well and wish you happiness, love, fulfillment, good fortune and all the best for 2011!

Happy New Year and Cheers
Adrian & Florian

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This year we gonna pin up FEIST!

While we’re still working on FEIST and progressing steadily but slowly, you might be lucky and live near a place where FEIST will be exhibited in the next months:

14th July to 31th August 2010
Stuttgart, Germany
Spiel Computer Spiel

July 2010
Sao Paulo, Brazil
FILE Festival

23th to 30th September 2010
Austin, Texas
Fantastic Fest (Arcade)

Autumn 2011
Around the World (traveling exhibition)
Swiss Game Design

Attending one of these festivals will give you an exclusive chance to get a peek at a recent in-development preview version of FEIST!

And if we find the time, we might even see you at the Fantastic Fest!