Once the refuge of the nerd, the otherworld of video games is now accessible to nearly everyone. An untold number of hours are spent gaming on home computers, on cell phones during el rides, and, increasingly around these parts, at bars stocked with classic arcade cabinets. We called a couple of authorities from the indie gaming realm to help us assess two of Chicago’s arcade bars.
Tibitoski found out at DePaul. In the summer of 2010 he teamed up with 18 other students enrolled in the school’s Game Experience program to make Octodad, an adventure game about a cephalopod masquerading as a human father. Octodad helped introduce its creators to the indie gaming scene, and in 2011 Tibitoski and nine of his pals formed Young Horses; the sequel to their debut, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, was released in January for PC, Mac, and Linux, with a Playstation 4 version due soon.
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Perez, who graduated from DePaul in 2009—and is acquainted with Tibitoski—says he doesn’t frequent arcaded bars as much as he’d like. That’s mostly the result of being consumed by his team’s first PC console release, Battle Chef Brigade, a game described as “Iron Chef in a fantasy Tolkienesque world, with mixed-in elements of a brawler like Streets of Rage.”
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