UPDATE: We want to thank all of you for all your enthusiasm and support. Special thanks to all our colleagues who gave us advice and contributed games, video testimonials, footage, photos, designs, music, help at events, and other support. We also want to thank the team at Sony’s Foster City office for championing the concept and making the PlayStation side of the project possible.

Hi PlayStation.Blog readers! Over the past few weeks, the Sportsfriends designers and I have been posting about the four indie multiplayer games that we’re hoping to bring to PS3 as one action-filled compendium.

We’ve exhibited all four games around the world at festivals and parties, and now we want to get them into your living room. But we need your support on Kickstarter to raise enough development funds. Today is the final day of our campaign!

So far, Noah Sasso has told you about BaraBariBall – a carefully balanced fighting game that plays like a stylized mix of Super Smash Brothers and volleyball.

Bennett Foddy, the creator of browser game classics like QWOP and GIRP, wrote about his head-to-head physics-based pole-vaulting game, Super Pole Riders.

Ramiro Corbetta told you about his popular 2v2 minimalistic sports game Hokra.

And I posted about Johann Sebastian Joust, a multi award-winning, no-graphics motion control game that uses PlayStation Move motion controllers and feels more like a 21st-century martial art than a videogame.

For us, Sportsfriends is a passion project. We believe that local multiplayer is a hugely rewarding way to play games, and we hope to demonstrate that it’s still viable for indies like us to develop these kinds of games. We love all sorts of videogames of course, but we feel like local multiplayer has been a bit overshadowed in the last decade with the rising popularity of online play.

Why local multiplayer? There’s nothing quite like playing games with your friends on the same couch or in the same physical space, yelling, laughing, trash-talking, and just plain old having a good time. There’s a certain magic playing in front of raucous crowd, or seeing the facial expressions of your opponents.

Think back to the console games you used to play in your friend’s basement, the playground games you improvised at school, or the games you played at the arcade. Those are the kinds of gaming experiences that have inspired Sportsfriends. We want to breathe new life into local multiplayer, taking it into the 21st century. We want to make deeply replayable games that will last the test of time. We want to call attention to what happens in front of the screen, between the human beings playing and spectating.

But today is the final day of our Kickstarter campaign, and we need your help to make it happen. Support us now and pre-order four extensively tested multiplayer games for PS3. Support local multiplayer!

Hello again PlayStation fans!

Last month, I posted about our Kickstarter campaign for Sportsfriends – a compendium of four multiplayer indie games, packaged together. The other three Sportsfriends developers already posted about their games – BaraBariBall, Super Pole Riders, and Hokra.

We need your support to help bring it to PS3, so I want to tell you about the fourth and final Sportsfriends game – my PlayStation Move game, Johann Sebastian Joust.

J.S. Joust is a motion control game for 2 to 7 players. The game isn’t even played with a screen! It’s playing using sound, rumble, and the LED light on the Move controllers.

The core idea is simple: if you ever move your controller too fast – or if someone comes up to you and makes you move your controller too fast – you’re out! The result is a minimalistic but deeply replayable game that plays like a face-to-face sword fight. Like some crazy 21st century martial art, it’s all about balance and timing. Protect your controller from your opponents, and try to jostle theirs!

The game’s music – Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Brandenburg Concertos” – sets the tempo of the game. When the music is slow, the controllers are extremely sensitive to motion, and so players have to move slowly. When the music speeds up, the threshold is higher, and so players can move a bit faster.

J.S. Joust is a game that works especially well at social gatherings and parties. I wanted to create a game that is as fun for spectators as it is for the players themselves. Because there’s no screen involved, players end up looking at each other, moving around the entire physical space. The game becomes a kind of combat qua baroque dance – players circle around each other, waiting for their opportunity to strike.

The game has received a lot of enthusiastic press coverage. Polygon, for example, declared that J.S. Joust “is defining a new gaming genre.” Penny Arcade wrote that it’s a game “that people need to play.”

J.S. Joust has been a big hit at festivals and game exhibitions around the world. It was a finalist at this year’s PAX 10, it was nominated for the 2012 IGF Seamus McNally Grand Prize, and it won two awards at IndieCade 2011. The game also took home the Innovation Award at this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards, beating out some AAA games like LA Noire and Portal 2.

Showing the early alpha version at all those events has been a ton of fun, but now I want to finish the game and get it out to all of you! That’s why we’re crowd-sourcing development funds on Kickstarter.

I’m especially excited to add a variety new modes and gameplay features. For example, I’ve been experimenting with an “invincibility mode.” If you press your trigger button, your light goes white and you go invincible – temporarily. After a few seconds, you run out of invincibility power, signaled by the fading brightness of the light. This feature makes the game even more tactical – you have to save your invincibility power for when you really need it… or for a good surprise strike!

I want to add a whole bunch of new features, so that each group of players can mix and match rules to find their own preferred version of the game. Like any good playground game, J.S. Joust is all about making the game your own by embellishing the minimalistic rules with custom modifications.

If the project is successfully funded, I’ll be experimenting with these ideas – and more. But we won’t be able to bring J.S. Joust or the other Sportsfriends games to PS3 without your grassroots support. If you have any interest in local multiplayer or motion control games that are actually physical and fun, support us on our Kickstarter page and secure your copy of the game now!

SPORTSFRIENDS featuring Johann Sebastian Joust from Die Gute Fabrik on Vimeo.

Greetings PlayStation peoples! I’m Doug Wilson, producer of Sportsfriends, a compendium of indie multiplayer games that we’re bringing to PSN in 2013.

And you can pre-order it on Kickstarter right now!

Sportsfriends is more than just a game – it’s four games! The games have already been prototyped, and we’ve exhibited them at parties, arcades, and special events around the world. A lot of people have been clamoring for us to bring these games to market, and now we can finally announce our lineup:

First up is my own no-graphics physical game, Johann Sebastian Joust. The game is basically a face-to-face sword fight, set to music. It uses the PlayStation Move controller, and supports up to seven players!

J.S. Joust is so much more than your average motion control game. It’s more like some kind of crazy 21st century martial art, illuminated by those beautiful LED lights on the PS Move controller.

At this year’s Game Developer Choice Awards, J.S. Joust even won the Innovation Award, beating out heavy hitters like L.A. Noire and Portal 2. We promise you’ve never tried another console game like it!

BaraBariBall, by Noah Sasso, is a colorful mix of fighting game and sports game. Players try to dunk the ball in the water on their opponent’s side. It’s like a more accessible, more stylized take on Super Smash Brothers, honed down to its essentials and set to charming tabla drums.

BaraBariBall has been shown at events like EVO, IndieCade, and Wild Rumpus, and it never fails to draw a crowd. You fighting game junkies out there are especially going to dig it!

Super Pole Riders is the four-player sequel to Bennett Foddy’s pole-vaulting polo game Pole Riders.

Bennett is the same guy who developed the ridiculous web game QWOP, so you know Super Pole Riders is going to bring that same formula of absurd, physics-based fun.

Hokra is a 2-vs-2 minimalistic sports game made by Ramiro Corbetta. It’s a deeply replayable game that’s all about competition, teamwork, and skill. It recently won the Audience Award at IndieCade 2012.

The thing that unites all four games is that they’ve been designed to be played with a bunch of friends, together in the same room, talking trash, sharing laughs, and kicking some butt. The four games are super easy to pick up and play, yet deep enough to support skill and high-level play.

And don’t worry, you don’t even have to be a fan of sports or sports games to enjoy Sportsfriends! Think back to those games you used to play at the arcade, or on the playground, or on your friend’s couch. That’s the kind of gaming experience that we’re proud to offer with Sportsfriends.

Why PlayStation 3, you ask? J.S. Joust has been specifically designed with the PS Move controller in mind, and the other three games fit great into a console setting, so we knew PlayStation 3 would be a perfect match. PlayStation has been very supportive of the whole Sportsfriends concept, and we’re happy to announce that we’ll be part of their forward-thinking Pub Fund program – the same program that helped bring you indie hits like Joe Danger, Papo & Yo, and Dyad.

But even with PlayStation’s Pub Fund support, we could still use some up-front funding to expand on the games and get them ported. That’s where you come in! You can preorder the game right now on Kickstarter. At the higher donor levels, you can also nab some sweet rewards.

Check it out, and let us know what you think!