Northern Irish game development studio, Italic Pig , has been nominated for Best Immersive Game at the upcoming Raindance Film Festival .
The Raindance Film Festival, taking place between September 19 - 26, 2019 in London, features the Immersive Summit, which is an annual symposium of eye-opening talks and panel discussions, shining the spotlight on leading creators and emerging voices from around the world. Raindance is committed to championing the creators who are pushing the artistic boundaries in the mediums of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality.
Italic Pig’s The Infinite Hotel is a character-driven VR adventure that boasts “A grand scale adventure in a room scale space”. Set in a hotel with an infinite number of floors, the player takes on the role of elevator operator to the weird and quirky staff and patrons of the universe’s most luxurious holiday resort.
Being nominated for the Best Immersive Game is not the first time that The Infinite Hotel has received critical acclaim. The game won The Big Indie Pitch at PocketGamer London and earned a highly regarded Best In Play award at GDC San Francisco. Both Oculus & HTC have shown genuine interest, and the demo has been compared to “stepping into a Pixar film”.
“What interests me in VR,” adds Kevin, “is that it hasn’t had its ‘Fruit Ninja’ moment yet. I’m not saying I’m looking for Fruit Ninja VR, but Fruit Ninja as a metaphor representing a new game mechanic that truly embraced and catered to touchscreen mobile. VR is still in its infancy, and as far as I can tell, people are still searching for the new mechanic that is ‘special’ to VR – not a port, not a reskinning, but a unique, purist experience for the medium. As someone who likes to mess with expectations and experimentally mash genres together, it’s the absence of hard rules that excites me most.”
The premise for The Infinite Hotel came from working within VR’s key limitation - physical space - rather than fighting against it with workarounds like teleportation, autorun or stick controls.
The first event of the Immersive Summit will take place at the Vue Piccadilly Cinema on 26th September between 10:30 - 5:30pm. As part of the Immersive Games Panel, Kevin Beimers, CEO of Italic Pig, will be talking about the creation of The Infinite Hotel and the challenges and opportunities that VR presents for storytellers.
The project originally entered development through the support of both the Creative Europe MEDIA Sub-Programme and Northern Ireland Screen, and has most recently been supported by Future Screens NI and HTC Viveport. Italic Pig is currently looking for adventurous partners to help fund and support the completion of The Infinite Hotel.
Trailer for The Infinite Hotel
About Raindance Immersive Summit
https://www.raindanceimmersive.com/
About Italic Pig
Italic Pig is a kickass Northern Irish entertainment studio filled with creative, talented and attractive individuals. We create sarcastically epic, narrative-driven stories for all audiences and platforms, and occasionally win awards for them.
About Kevin Beimers
kevin@italicpig.com
Creator/Director Kevin Beimers entered the games industry nine years ago by way of programming, web development, animation, art direction and scriptwriting. His first release under Italic Pig was published by Team17, and was nominated by the Writers’ Guilds of Ireland & Great Britain. He’s a regular speaker at worldwide gaming events, has won multiple Big Indie Pitch competitions, a Big Indie Award and a GDC Best In Play.