The Aesthetica Film Festival will be celebrating game culture, design and production as they launch their all-new Games Lab.
It is the first UK Film Festival to curate and include games in a public programme. It will exhibit 40 indie games projects across PC, console and headset, and gives attendees the opportunity to explore new worlds and adventure.
The Aesthetica Games Lab will take place at Spark:York from Wednesday 8 to Sunday 12 November, in partnership with investigate.games and Viridian FX.
The line-up includes titles from well-known developers like Joe Richardson’s The Procession to Calvary, a Pythonesque adventure game in which you pilfer from pirates, conspire with cardinals and perform miracles. Mask of the Rose, by Failbetter, is set in Fallen London and offers romance with a hint of murder. South of the Circle from State of Play, meanwhile, is a narrative adventure, telling the story of a Cambridge academic who finds himself in Antarctica during the Cold War.
Attendees will also discover titles from up-and-coming designers, like golf-simulation-with-a-twist Wonderputt Forever (Damp Gnat); the island exploration game Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (Polygon Treehouse); meditative underwater story The Journey (Austin Wolfe) and Nuts (Joon, Pol, Muuutsch, Char & Torfi), an offbeat forest mystery about squirrels under surveillance.
Each day, investigate.games will host guided play sessions, in which experts will talk audiences through the games in detail.
There will also be a variety of workshops, events and masterclasses to accompany the Games Lab. These include talks from Ubisoft and Dimension VR, as well as Kids’ Gaming workshops, the Women in Film, TV and Games Drinks and the VR & Games Happy Hour.
Cherie Federico, festival director, said: “The video game industry is undergoing dramatic change culturally and technologically.
“We see journeys into narrative design as a crucial way to understand how storytelling is evolving in the 21st century. We see gaming much like film, but as a player you are involved in bringing a story to life.”
To find and more and to see the full festival programme, visit the ASFF website.