Target Selling Indie Games with Matching T-Shirts


Target, of all places, is selling a line of t-shirts that come bundled with indie PC games from the Experimental Gameplay Project. And according to Kevin Allen, Jr., they appear to be actually interesting little games, not schlocked together remixes of mainstream themes:

The games are all pretty interesting sounding. Not your usual game content, for example there is a game where you're a little dude with a gigantic head (like, your head has gravity and that effects play) trying to grow a dozen roses so you can attract the attention of a girl with a gigantic head. Or you are a robot spider in some uncertain distant desert future that has to traverse a dangerous landscape all while keeping your egg sac safe for future generations. The games get variously more abstract from there.

They very specifically weren't the kind of re-skinned games you normally see as cheep promotional items. There was no cars are fast and awesome tokyo drift game. There was no shoot the aliens with your space AK-47 game. There was one giant robot destroying a city game, but from what i could tell it was actually about finding true love with another city-destroying giant robot (a weird theme is developing here).

Each shirt and game costs $12.

Post 081240 [Kevin Allen Jr ( via Waxy]

Update: I can't get any contact directly with the apparel company, but it appears the games have been favorites in the Experimental Gameplay Project, so the two are probably affiliated. I confirmed with Chronic Logic, maker of Gish, one of the featured games, that the program was legit. Or at least they thought so. Someone else, who I was unable to get on the phone, had actually done the deal.

Update 2: Looks like it's the work of 2D Boy:

Currently, we have 8 designs doing a test run in Target - six from the Experimental Gameplay Project, and two from Edmund’s back catalog including some Gish lost levels. Our evil plan is to get indie games into the hands of an audience that would otherwise never know that indie games exist. Fingers crossed this does ok, because I want 4th grade kids everywhere wearing velociraptors.

Case closed!

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  1. Giant city-smashing robots in love? I’m sending one of my American friends on a field trip for me!

  2. Not all Targets, not yet anyway… I just checked the north Seattle Target (Northgate) this evening – nobody working there had heard of them…

  3. i work in the target in ocean nj, and we been selling these for a month. Maybe they’re only in the northest right now? the shirt’s look pretty cool too, but this is coming from a guy that most gamers think dresses too “thugged out”

  4. Dropped by the Target in Burbank (suburb of Los Angeles). They had one shirt left, Tower of Goo. I bought it. Glad it was a medium. Burbank’s a bit of a nerd center, being close to several movie, tv, and animation studios so I’m not surprised they’re all gone.

    As for the game, it seems more like a proof of concept but it’s playable and has neat physics. I suck at it.

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