Cobalt Lane, Jumpy Bit, Grey Alien Games and Muscle Cat have teamed up for InterfaceX26, a Steam Showcase for "Fake OS" games. Apart from showcasing the games, InterfaceX26 gamifies tagging the games for an official Valve tag with a bustom web app.
A new Steam festival for “fake OS games” is on the horizon: Alexander Zacherl (Cobalt Lane, Imprinted), Helen Carmichael (Grey Alien Games, Forbidden Solitaire), Harvey Carman (Muscle Cat, Alawon: Composer Life Simulator) and Robin Kocaurek (Jumpy Bit, The Games You Make) are organising the InterfaceX26 steam showcase event from 27 April to 4 May. The event features games that play in the space of simulating computer desktops, phones, fictional programs and any other “fake OS”. Participating companies and developers will be Devolver Digital, tinyBuild, Fellow Traveller, No More Robots, Sam Barlow, Daniel Mullins and Zach Barth/Zachtronics, among others.
The goal of the showcase, apart from selling games of course, is to make the “Fake OS” tag on Steam an officially recognised one. For this, the organisers have built a custom web-app in which users can tag games in an interface – very much akin to a game itself. With enough games tagged with the custom user tag, the organisers hope that Valve will instate it as an official tag as well.
Zacherl says, “Even as someone designing a Fake OS game for more than a year, it took me months to put together this list of games, with lots of support from the community. We still find new ones every week! We should really make it easier for the developers following after us. Let’s get this Steam tag off the ground together.”
Alongside the sale, the event includes a live showcase on May 2, featuring 32 new and updated games. The showcase will be hosted by GameSpot’s Kurt Indovina and Lucy James, with appearances from creators including Jesse Cox, Dodger, Nookrium, and Stormfall33.
