SuperFESTival

Toronto’s Independent Games & Creative Technology Festival

Festival Overview

  • A game showcase featuring over 100 games from around the world, with a focus on highlighting local developers from Ontario.
  • Torontrons scattered across the city, bringing playable games from the showcase directly to the public.
  • A week of free workshops, industry talks, and panels for the community.
  • The festival culminates in one big party: our Hand Eye Ball.
Hand Eye Ball Event

History

Started in 2022, Super FESTival brings together years of Hand Eye Society events into one annual hybrid celebration of independent games, and creative technology. Hosted online and in Toronto, the festival brings together game developers, artists, and players from around the world for a week of talks, workshops, experimental showcases, and a curated selection of playable indie games.

PAST EVENTS

Our weeklong festival featured a games showcase with over 20 amazing indie games from across the globe that show the inventive spirit of independent game development. Throughout the week, our Torontrons popped up across Toronto with indie games to play our favourite games:

  • The End of Gameplay by Drogen
  • The Edge of Allegoria by Button Factory Games
  • Retroronto by Starspray Studios Ltd.
  • Renters Market by scared creature
  • Into the Data Swarm by Digital Centurion
  • CHROMA + ELEKTRON by Eric·ZDW
  • The Edge of Allegoria by Second Fiddle Studio
  • BLINDSPOT by Pocket Moon Games

From Toronto to Seattle, this year’s speaker lineup brought together developers, artists, and industry veterans to dig into the craft, business, and community of making games. Ten sessions covered everything from prototyping multiplayer games in Unity to navigating your first publishing deal:

  • Accelerate Your Multiplayer Prototyping With Unity 6: Esteban E. Maldonado Cabán – Seattle, Washington, USA
  • How To Flip Assets to Improve Your Game: Devon Wiersma – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Structured Playtesting. Industry Feedback. Lessons Learned, A GRID Post-Mortem: Antonio Miceli – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Everyday Excel – Using it Effectively: Connor Sutherland-Stewart – Belleville, Ontario, Canada
  • Level-Up Business: What Startups Can Learn from Side Quests, Boss Battles & Extra Lives : Joshua Green – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  • Deal Mode, Your First Publishing Agreement: Madeleine Brown – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Art & Videogames, How Artists Are Expanding the Games Medium: Mitchell F. Chan – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • PANEL Level Up with ACTRA Toronto Performers: ACTRA Toronto – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • WORKSHOP Audio Editing For Dummies: Xavier Oshinowo – Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Super FESTival 2024 returned with a week of talks, workshops, and showcases celebrating independent games and creative technology. Our games showcase featured over 30 amazing indie games from across the globe, spotlighting the inventive spirit of independent game development. Alongside our online programming, this years the festival expanded into the city with Torontron arcade cabinets installed across Toronto, featuring playable works from our showcase artists:

  • Angels of Battle – BV Taisei
  • Hawk and Puma – Niebla Games
  • The Crimson Diamond – Julia Minamata
  • Praxis Fighter X – SPARSE//GameDev
  • Rad Skater – Mighty Yell

Our speaker roster stretched across continents this year, with developers and artists joining us from Toronto, Nigeria, Japan, Chile, Germany, and beyond to share stories from their own creative journeys; on narrative design, labour organizing, empathy in game-making, and more:

  • Let’s Talk Narrative Design!: Seamus Ly – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Narrative Arts: Failing The Fun: Evgeni Puzankov – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • What I learned from Playing Licensed Tie-In Games for a Year: Devon Wiersma – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Comedy In Narrative Games – Lessons Learned Through Writing Lil’ Guardsman: Scott Christian, Matt Bernard, Jeremy Lapalme – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Tips to make programming your game less hellish: Caroline Clark – Germany
  • Games as Cultural Bridges and Research-Creation: Nico Valdivia Hennig – Chile
  • “It’s Dangerous to Go Alone…” – Embarking on Our Indie Dev Journey: VCD – Lagos, Nigeria
  • Game Making with Empathy and Taking Care of Yourself in Hard Times : Charlotte Pang – Edinburgh, UK
  • Creating Atmospheric Game Experiences : Farfama – Kanagawa, Japan
  • Bridging Traditional Painting and Video Games : Sura Kamawi – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Sparking Playful Ambition : Duncan Corrigan – Melbourne, Australia
  • (Mine)Crafting A Better Future : Mashfiq Ahmed – New York, New York, USA
  • PANEL We’re Finally Awake: How Workers at Bethesda Got Organized! Game Workers Unite! – Toronto, Montreal, Austin, Dallas, and Rockville
  • WORKSHOP Transforming Hand Painted Art Into A Game : Sura Kamawi – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • WORKSHOP Production Tools and Taking Care of Yourself while Game Dev-ing : Charlotte Pang – Edinburgh, UK


Building on the success of 2022, Super FESTival 2023 showcased the artistic side of game creation through live talks, creative technology workshops, interactive play sessions and a games showcase with over 50 games from across the globe, including Slay the Princess, Her Name Was Fire, This Bed We Made, and Civic Story.

This year’s programming leaned hands-on, with a full slate of workshops alongside our talks and panels, from building a supportive studio culture to making your first visual novel, plus a couple of deep-dive conversations on collective organizing in the industry:

  • Making Story Choices Matter, Fair, and Scaleable: Alfe Clemencio
  • Learn How To Make Bundles!: Taylor McCue 
  • How To Build A Supportive Game Studio : Dave Proctor
  • What Indie Games Can Learn from Indie Rap : Shawn Alexander Allen 
  • Introduction To Screensavers : Ash K 
  • Video Games as a Medium for Change : Amyr Said 
  • Using serious topics to design fun games : Anzal Baig 
  • Stopping to start understanding : Tigran Bleyan 
  • How To Make And Finish A Little Game When Everything Is Hard: littlerat 
  • PANEL Indiepocalypse: Indie Game Small Press and Anthology Roundtable: Indiepocalypse
  • PANEL Videogame Workers’ Co-ops! : Pablo Quarta, Emile Brodeur, Squinky, Daniel Korn
  • WORKSHOP Make a Visual Novel for the Web : Geoffery Golden & Josh Grams
  • WORKSHOP An Introduction to Adventure Game Studio : Julia Minamata (She/Her)
  • WORKSHOP Virtual Realms, Real Adventures : Natasha Ramoutar & Alyssa Rodriguez
  • WORKSHOP Designing Puzzle Games 101 : Ludipe
  • WORKSHOP Intro to Plunderludics: how to make videogames out of videogames : Jonny, Moochi, Gurn Group
  • WORKSHOP Playing Games Badly: Manipulating Analog Signals : nilson carroll
  • WORKSHOP Cute, Quick and Easy 2D Animations in GOOGLE SLIDES?! : Charlotte Pang

The first-ever SuperFESTival marked our transition to a full online celebration of independent games and creative technology. A two-day event with over 50 games showcased, including the games Scarlet Hollow, Validate, Amelia, and With You. Plus superJAM: a hand eye society game jam, with 14 jammers producing 8 final games:

  • Agami Village : https://staradavid.itch.io/agami-village
  • Alien buds: https://nathanpowlesslynes.itch.io/sufest
  • Angel does some SICK band jams : https://le-onionboi.itch.io/angles-sick-band-jams
  • Missed Connections : https://planplantsillus.itch.io/missed-connections
  • Pet Semetary : https://jesseeisenbart.itch.io/pet-sematary
  • Sound Marine : https://cymatiste.itch.io/soundmarine
  • TYTYTY : https://localkristine.itch.io/tytyty
  • Wish you were here! : https://seamusly.itch.io/wywh-a-fresh-start

As our very first festival, 2022 set the tone for what SuperFESTival would become, a space for candid conversations about the realities of making games, from solo dev survival to mental health in game communities:

  • Creating the Indiepocalypse: How you too can create a brighter future for different games : Andrew Baillie
  • Building a Games Industry in Africa : Michael Oscar Esio 
  • How To Ship a Game as a Solo Developer : Devon Wiersma 
  • “If And Only If”: Exploring Variables and Conditional Logic in Interactive Fiction : G.C. Baccaris
  • Alternate Reality Games and Participatory Propaganda : Justin Bortnick
  • Relationship Status = Complicated! : Bobbi Augustine Sand
  • Cultivating Playful Culture : Duncan Corrigan
  • Using Early Access as a marketing tool for narrative games : Tony Howard-Arias
  • PANEL Surface Pressure: Mental Health in Games Community Development
  • PANEL Reorienting How We Make Play: Accountability, Healing, and Restorative Justice in Games
  • PANEL The Art of Crafting an Indigenous Future