2023 Rochester Game Festival: Meet the Exhibitors

ABOUT
ROC Game Fest attendees will be able to join us on the Show Floor at RIT’s MAGIC Center to try out new and upcoming projects from more than 40 exhibitors from across New York State.

THE DETAILS
WHEN: 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
WHERE: Atrium + Sound Stage + Third Floor
AUDIENCE: All Ages

ORGANIZATIONS

MAGIC Spell Studios
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Founded in 2013, at the RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity (MAGIC), we believe that we learn by making. This guiding principle informs our work and our relationships and is at the heart of what we do.

For ROC Game Fest attendees, MAGIC Spell Studios will bring a collection of ten games from our first Game Dev Summer Camp created by high school students over a three-week period where they learned the basics of game development.

ROC Game Dev is an organization dedicated to fostering a community of game creators in Rochester, NY. Our mission is to provide a local platform for game creators at beginner, amateur, and professional levels to learn, share, and collaborate in all aspects of building games.

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
1UpState, a celebration of games and the people who make them, is a new expo for game developers in New York’s Tech Valley Region! Saturday, October 21, at the Albany Capital Center.

Join the GLG Crew for pick up gaming competitions and matches against other festival attendees on new-generation gaming consoles and high-end PCs!

RIT Interactive Games and Media / ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
H4CKB0X is a work in progress mobile game developed over the past summer by Rochester Institute of Technology’s departments of Interactive Games and Media and ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute.

The goal of the game is to introduce cybersecurity concepts to the general population (with a focus on middle school and high school students) in a way that is engaging, fun, and makes individuals interested in potential cybersecurity career opportunities. Using unique and diverse robots to showcase potential job titles, a work in progress skill tree to upgrade robots/your agency, and a collection of minigames assigned to the robots that are each different based on popular games on the app store, H4CKB0X is being developed by RIT students to be a game that makes topics in cybersecurity fun!

Rochester Community Media Center
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Vimeo

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Rochester Community Media Center is home to RCTV (Spectrum Channel 1301) AND WXIR (100.9 FM).

RCTV plays a critical role in democratizing media access in Rochester, NY. Since our founding in 1993, our mission has been to empower a diverse community of individuals with access to media tools, technology, and training — no matter that person’s age, gender, sexuality, religion, or heritage.

WXIR is Rochester, NY’s urban alternative radio station, broadcasting on frequency 100.9 FM in Rochester, NY.

GAME DEVELOPERS

Alexis Lipina

Exalt is a hack-and-slash action-adventure that combines 2D pixel-art visuals with 3D exploration and gameplay. Explore a world as a robot-mage, blinking around enemies and casting spells. Play in a wave-based arena game mode, or help test some unfinished prototypes of levels for the in-development campaign.

Amanda Rowe
Links: Official Website

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Sword of the Morel [Mushroom Kid’s Big Grass Sword] is an Adventure Platformer about a little mushroom named Mica. After their village is swooped away by a bird, Mica must use their grandma’s old sword… an enchanted blade of grass that grows with each kill… to save the village.

Chits and Chat
Links: Official Website | YouTube

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Chutes and Levers is a collection of one-card puzzle mazes with a side-scroller arcade feel. Squeaky Clean is a one-player in-hand deck-transformation game full of laundry puns and criminality. And Tilting at Windmills is a one-player in-hand game with beautiful hand-drawn illustrations, where the cards rotate like windmill blades.

CyberSurfer
Links: Discord | Twitter | YouTube

Put down the controllers of yesterday and pick up your phone to experience an intuitive experience in CyberSurfer. Race on a hoverboard in time trials to get the best time and see who is the fastest in the world! Learn a new way to move through the universe, a new way to control your path!

Erik Andersen
Links: Official Website | Discord | Twitter | YouTube

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Can you learn Japanese by solving puzzles? So to Speak is a game about wandering in Japan, looking at signs, overhearing conversations, and using context clues in the environment to figure out what it all means. No background in Japanese is assumed.

eStudio NooN
Links: Official Website

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Wacky Invaders is an arcade inspired shooter where you command a lone turret defending earth from an alien clown invasion. Scoot and shoot, gather power-ups, and destroy all the enemies before they land!

Players work together in a busy restaurant kitchen to fulfill orders before the time runs out in Kitchen Chaos.

Motor Mayhem Madness is the ultimate Virtual Reality car and monster truck game that takes racing and stunts to the next level. Immerse yourself in the game and experience the adrenaline rush as you take control of powerful monster trucks and navigate through challenging arenas in a variety of exciting game modes.

Games By Thomas

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Ball Game Remix is a single-player and multiplayer modern-day Breakout/Pong clone featuring a cartoony art style. Play as Ball, Beth, or any of the characters available in this demo as you go head-to-head with your friends or fight the other enemies trying to take your crown.

Growler Interactive
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

While exploring deep underground on a journey to the center of the earth, your party has been waylaid by trolls! As the leader of the expedition, it is up to you to take back your stolen supplies and rescue your comrades. Map the optimal route through the randomly generated labyrinths. Then run out as fast as possible after grabbing your gear because the trolls will be hot on your trail in Growler Interactive’s Delvin’ Dwarves!

HiveMind Studios
Links: Official Website

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Good Luck Valley is a single-player, 2D puzzle-platformer in which the player takes the role of Anari, a young girl who finds herself in a mystical spirit world during a complicated time in her life. Traverse the spirit world’s unusual terrain via your magical bouncing mushrooms to get home safely and unveil the truth about this mysterious world.

Holly Mott
Links: Discord | Twitter

DAIR is a fast-paced, aggressive platform fighter featuring intricate ground and air movement, and a strong, air-only attack. Carefully designed to teach fundamental skills such as edgeguarding, ledge trapping, and general option coverage, DAIR rewards careful planning to shut your opponent down and restrict their agency. Just don’t get reversed.

Hypostatic Studios
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

A Perfect Year is a sci-fi RPG with educational elements.

In the year 8128, the last Perfect Number discovered by the Ancient Greeks, a futuristic civilization known as the “Strata Society” is seeking to perfect humanity by systematically melding all remaining human minds, saving only their individual positive factors – exactly like the summation of Perfect Numbers. Players will race, ruin, reason, and resolve their way through varied psychological landscapes, using personalized gameplay systems to interact with the worlds as they see fit. Fans of Hack-And-Slash, Shooter, RPGs, Puzzle, Platformer, and Racing games will all find something to enjoy in the polychromatic gameplay of A Perfect Year.

Cannon Custodian is a retro-styled arcade game of skill and hi-scores. You’re Ted, Area 51’s newest resident janitor that just so happens to get stuck in an interdenominational jail, mistaken for an era 1981 arcade machine. With an enormous cannon car, blast your way through waves of escaped convicts and their kingpins, all the while defending your energy pods.

Peacock Block is a fast-paced “Take That!” card game for 3-5 players, with two game modes and three ways to win. Players take on the roll of peacocks at a rager of a party, all trying to attract the love of the bodacious peahens by flirting, growing tailfeathers, or presenting The Ring. However, it won’t be that easy.

Alchemazam! is a collectable card game that can be played over multiple game formats. In this first chapter of the game, players don the role of wizards and alchemists all competing in The Grand Arcanum, a tournament of champions where the victor gains a seat of the High Council. With multiple ways to defeat an opponent, players will cast spells and summon creatures, all the while managing their resources to keep their strategies strong.

W.A.V.E.S. is a randomly-generated competitive tabletop game where players control a team of divers in waters that are turbulent with seismic activity. The most rarest jewels are abundant, but so is the danger!

Jacob Yaple

In Oviraptor Extinction, players control packs of dinosaurs stealing eggs to survive catastrophic climate changes.

And in Return of the Nautilus, the legendary man-made sea monster is reborn from the wreckage, along with three others made from the same blueprints. An undersea adventure across the world’s oceans.

Jeffrey Hube

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Gravity is a first-person puzzle game where you change the direction of gravity, interact with different kinds of crates, and avoid hazards in order to solve puzzles.

Julian Heuser
Links: Official Website | Discord | YouTube

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Year Unknown is a narrative driven game set in the very far future. To learn about the world, you search for and use terminals connected to a vast data store. However, the amount of data is too vast to search through yourself. You need the help of an Interface AI. They’re made to find the truth, but be wary of their interpretations.

Kumro Games
Links: Official Website | Twitch | Twitter | YouTube

Jamjam N Jelly is a non-sensical, high-tactical, 110% cute ’em up. This high octane bullet hell features hand-drawn and hand-animated art.

Latinforimagination
Links: Official Website | Discord

Loop Thesis is a time traveling puzzle game about both the intrinsic joy of exploring systems and about the way that simple routines and strange places grow on us over time.

The game is built on top of an internally consistent simulation of time, and all of the mechanics of the game are emergent properties of that simulation. Players are tasked with exploring and slowly deciphering an encrypted world, while learning about both its mechanics and about the inhabitants of this world and why they’ve chosen to stay inside of a time loop rather than leave.

Letiman Games
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter

Letiman Games publishes games aimed at bringing family and friends together at the table. We have a wide variety of games to fulfill a wide variety of gaming tastes.

Adventure Tactics (and its expansion, Adventures in Alchemy) is a love letter to classic JRPGs with a robust class system that features over 20 classes and a branching campaign set in a family-friendly fantasy world.

Matter Games
Links: Discord

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Reflectile is a minimal precision-puzzle game that yearns for the early 2000s era of video games. It will test your ability to cut corners, squeeze through tight corridors, and make split-second inputs to reach the goal of each stage.

Menace Interactive
Links: Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Project AEGIS is a Post-Y2K Apocalyptic Emergent Game Immersive Simulation (AEGIS) set in the rebuilt world of the American Southwest.

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Easter Quest is a game Jam challenge game that I made this year on Easter. The Cat Cafe is an indie demo game for a character ideas and presentations for a collaboration game that my fellow interns and I have been working. Lomas is a five-day game jam challenge project.

Nilson Carroll
Links: Official Website

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Whenever You Can Breathe is an autobiographical short RPG about wandering around a grocery store while surviving mental illness.

Oh, a Rock! Studios
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
It’s The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World! A brand-new visual novel by a former delivery boy is a delicious visual novel about pizza and the time-travelers who make it.

It’s the year 20XX, and crime can happen anywhere—even in cyberspace. And when someone gets pulled over on the Information Superhighway, they get a one-way ticket to… Internet Court. Where the courtroom is virtual, and trials are livestreamed for the whole world to watch.

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
The magic of making music doesn’t require years of practice anymore. Nocturne is a virtual reality music game that allows players to perform a variety of enchanting classical melodies with the wave of their wand. Inspired by the theremin, Nocturne provides the challenge of rhythm and beat games in Play Along, while encouraging musical expression in Improvise.

Pewskeepski
Links: Official Website

Cyborguin is a side-scrolling platformer about a cyborg penguin who fights his way through a world of monstrous insects in a desperate search for a safe place to call home.

Tank Pig is all about solving problems with coordination, multi-tasking, and a healthy amount of heavy ordnance. Take control of Tank Pig and the Pilot on their journey to save what is left of humanity.

Space Cat 9 is a roguelike platformer where you have 9 lives to stop evil mice from stealing the moon!

Shot in the Dark is a classic western tale of bloody vengeance, rituals, and teeth in the dark. Take up the gun of the lone bandit as they stop at nothing in the pursuit of vengeance. The only thing standing between the bandit and their quarry are the occult nightmares lurking in the darkness. From demons to cultists and long dead gunslingers, all manner of foes are arrayed against you.

RootaBeta Games
Links: Official Website | Discord | Twitter

UpRooted is a 2.5D action-adventure featuring a mage and a paladin fighting to hack a virus corrupting a forest. Play as two and fight as one… stunning as a mage and slashing as a paladin. Learn to work together as you venture through the beautiful but wilting forest.

Rose Silletto
Links: Instagram

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Queer: It’s Not A Bad Word is a game about queer identity, queer history, and queer community. The game is an educational text-based RPG based on interviews with real people. In the game, you can explore New York City, Rochester, and Washington, D.C. and talk to people you encounter along the way. In your travels you will hear the stories of eight different people of different ages, identities, and backgrounds.

This project aims to increase awareness of the queer community… our culture, our experiences, and our many varied members… for those in the community and for our allies. Representation is important and what is better representation than the stories of real people?

RR Team

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Racquetball Rampage is a VR brick breaker. Originally made in a 24-hour game jam as an attempt to take an old concept in video games, and do something new with it, it places the player in an arcade court with bricks to be broken, powerups to be collected, and high scores to be set!

Secret Boss Games
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
Reforge is a weapon crafting, battle royale card game. 2-6 players take turns attaching parts, placing shields, utilizing game changing gadgets, and attacking opponents in order to be the last one standing.

The Spacies
Links: Official Website | Twitter

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
You take on the role of Arya, a young mechanic-turned-pilot desperately hungry for fame and fortune. Utilizing a junker ship she purchased from her former employer, she enters the galaxy’s largest Space Gauntlet with her hopes high and nothing to lose. Though the spacecraft lacks a means of propulsion, Arya’s newest invention, the Rope Tool — a cross between a grappling hook and a stapler — allows her to still utilize the ship. This device makes it possible for her to attach rockets and other floating debris to her ship, employing them as makeshift peripherals. However, the strength of the Rope Tool is limited — its attachments will be knocked away if the ship takes any damage.

SynthLabs
Links: Official Website | Instagram | Twitter

Party Crashers is an asymmetric VR party game in which one player dons a headset to host a virtual bash with friends joining from any web-connected device!

Team Crucible
Links: Official Website | Discord | Twitter

Infiltrate the depths of an exoplanet mining facility to scavenge for gear and challenge a corrupt megacorporation in Raw Metal. Utilize gadgets and equipment in high-stakes stealth, and hone your fighting skills in breakneck combat in this stylish stealth-action dungeon crawler.

Team Plutinite
Links: Discord | Twitter | YouTube

FIRST APPEARANCE AT ROC GAME FEST
State of Matter is an FPS puzzler where the player is an intergalactic agent tasked with delving into an abandoned facility on a frozen asteroid. With the help of a gun that can blast matter in various states, the player must solve puzzles and defeat enemies to explore deeper into the facility.

Usiak Games and Designs
Links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Skeptics is a cooperative tabletop game for 1-4 players where you play as paranormal investigators. Form a team trying to prove the existence of ghosts that haunt an environment by gathering evidence of the paranormal.

Players race against the clock rolling dice to match icons to Search, Reveal, and Solve Clues. Each Clue will lead one step closer to revealing the Ghost. Environment Cards are drawn at the stroke of midnight which may have hazards and conditions that will impede the players’ progress. Investigators win if the existence of the Ghost can be proven in time, but fail if time runs out.

Zachary Gardner
Links: Official Website | Patreon | Twitter | YouTube

Garbanzo Quest is a bullet-heck platformer where your only weapon is your own spit. Help Chickpea (and Pinto if you have a friend) save their Friends in the silly world called Freedomland. This land is full of hand-crafted challenges, secrets, branching paths, and other things perhaps!?!

Zucchini People Games
Links: Official Website | Twitter

Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught is a competitive skirmish game in which each player controls an adventuring party from one of the powerful factions of the Forgotten Realms. Parties delve into dungeons, battle rival adventurers, and confront fearsome monsters on a quest for treasure and glory!