Arcade

Winner of last year's Nuovo Award at the GDC, Nidhogg is a brutally fast-paced swordfighting game for two players. Best enjoyed in public, it only appears at events and can't be played any other way. Messhof aka Mark Essen joins us from Los Angeles to show it off.

Pushing the boundaries of traditional gameplay, Proteus is a currently-unreleased game of exploration and discovery by Ed Key with a reactive soundtrack by composer David Kanaga. Winner of last year's Indiecade Audio category, Proteus was nominated for this year's IGF Nuovo Award.

Like a psychedelic Super Smash Bros. meets Volleyball for the NES, BaraBariBall is a competitive sports game for two or four players created for NYU Game Center's No Quarter exhibition. Its creator, Noah Sasso, will be joining us from Brooklyn, NY.

Big Bucket Software, the creators of Mac/iOS 8bit-sky-is-falling platformer The Incident, will be previewing their as-yet-untitled new game exclusively at XOXO Arcade. Portland-based designer Neven Mrgan will be joined by partner Matt Comi from Perth, Australia.

Terry Cavanagh, the Irish madman behind games like VVVVVV and the world's only kitty MMO, built the hypnotic and addictive Hexagon in less than 24 hours. Super Hexagon is the newly-released iOS sequel, fleshing Hexagon into a full game playable at XOXO Arcade.

Joust is a mix between dance and combat, challenging up to seven people to move their opponents' controllers while protecting their own. Created by Die Gute Fabrik in Copenhagen, the Indiecade award winner can only be played in person, and we'll be playing the newest build straight from the developers.

Ben Purdy is taking his popular Minecraft in Real-Life hack, an interactive 3D projection-mapped Minecraft cube, and debuting it as a competitive two-player game.