Arcade

Mineko’s Night Market is a game about “crafting crafts, eating eats, and catting cats.” Set on a mysterious Japanese island overrun by cats, a young girl named Mineko must discover the secrets of the town while crafting items for the weekly night markets. A celebration of Japanese culture, creators Brent and Brandi Kobayashi join us from Vancouver to show it off.

The debut from designers Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser, Ooblets is an upcoming farming, creature collection, and town life indie game inspired by Pokémon, Harvest Moon, and Animal Crossing. Manage your farm, grow and train your ooblets, explore strange lands, and dance-battle wild ooblets and other ooblet trainers.

Created by St. Louis designer Tj Hughes, Nour is an experimental game with no goals or objectives. It just wants you to play with your food — button-mashing to interact with deliciously-rendered scenes of ramen noodles, boba tea, popcorn and more in unexpected ways. And without the mess!

Neo Cab is an emotional survival game about staying human in a world disrupted by automation. You play as Lina, the last human driver on the neon-drenched streets of Los Ojos, struggling to make ends meet while saving a missing friend. Most of Chance Agency, including creative lead Patrick Ewing and producer Felix Kramer, join us from San Francisco.

Like Spaceteam in an office, Busy Work is a fast-paced multiplayer installation game that makes frantic and hilarious gameplay out of tedious office work. Grab a cubicle and compete with your colleagues to answer as many customer emails as you can. Creators Matt and Lisa Bethancourt are driving from Boulder to bring their unique game to XOXO.

BubbleSort Zines creator Amy Wibowo (aka Sailor Mercury) was inspired by a real-life trip to create Pedal Pushers, a game about biking across Finland with your cousin. Pedal with your fingers, chat with your cousin, and set up camp in the forest every night, with a charming soundtrack by Louie Zong and Steven Universe music composer Aivi Tran.

A fictional long-lost console from the 1980s, the Cathode Mark 1 is the thesis project of Toronto artist Ryan Mason, constructed from multiple CRT televisions strung together. Each multi-channel game was specially designed for the retro-futuristic display, some making their debut at XOXO.

“It's a lovely weekday morning in the village and you are a horrible goose.” It’s impossible not to love Untitled Goose Game, the hotly-anticipated new game from the creators of Push Me Pull You, where you play a mischievous goose making trouble. The team from House House joins us from Melbourne, Australia.

The Nuovo Award-nominated KIDS is an experimental project about the psychology of groups, the second collaboration from Zurich-based director and animator Michael Frei and game designer Mario von Rickenbach after their award-winning animated short film and game, Plug & Play.

Set on a fictional British island in the late 1980s, Knights and Bikes is a hand-painted action-adventure game about Nessa & Demelza, two tough imaginative girls, exploring the island in a Goonies-inspired tale. The debut game from Foam Sword Games, designers Rex Crowle and Moo Yu join us from London.

After growing tired of people touching her hair without permission, Portland art director Momo Pixel made Hair Nah, putting you in the shoes of a black woman trying to travel while swatting away grabby white hands. The game went viral, featured on CNN, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, Vice, and countless others.

A delightful dystopian adventure game about making people happy, Pikuniku is set in a strange but playful world where everything is not as perfect as it seems. Creators Arnaud De Bock and Rémi Forcadell join us from London and Paris, respectively, to present their upcoming game.

Tom Astle is making Wobbledogs in public, a game about raising goofy physics-driven dogs, continually sharing the development of his fully physics-driven dogs on Twitter and to his backers on Patreon as they grow, mutate, and interact in unexpected ways with the virtual world around them.

Started as an NYU thesis project, Tuned Out is a collection of 15 multiplayer arcade minigames that can be switched between instantly like the channels of a TV, challenging players to juggle all games at the same time to achieve the highest possible score. Switch channels to escape death, mess with your competition, or just because you feel like it. Presented by creators Denver Coulson, Missy Senteio, and Ben Sironko.

The Portland Indie Game Squad is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the local indie game community with events and resources. They’ve curated an incredible showcase of some of the best games the Pacific Northwest has to offer, and the designers of each will be on site to talk about their work. Featured games include Dicey Dungeons, The World Next Door, Plunge, That Blooming Feeling, Glowing Door, DJ Clips' Ultimate Pipe Dream, #Breakforcist Battle, Cat Burglar, Robot Island, So-Gnar, Planet Pain, Duster, Death Sword, Tetrash, Rocket Dad, and Ship It.