New indie games on view at Fantastic Arcade event

Through Thursday, you can play them at fest held at The Highball.

Every year, Fantastic Arcade spotlights some of the best and weirdest up-and-coming indie games, the kind of titles you’ll probably be downloading in six months or a year for your PC, Xbox One or PlayStation 4 if they’re not already available.

But the games are playable now for free, in arcade cabinets and on the big screen as part of freefor-all tournaments at the event, which is open to the public at The Highball and Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar through Thursday.

The video game event is part of Fantastic Fest, and benefits from its proximity to the film festival’s free-form vibe and mingling.

Fantastic Arcade has posted a day-by-day guide to the event. Monday night brought an opening-night party and demo of the highly anticipated “Rez Infinite” for PlayStation VR, but there are still lots of panels, tournaments and other events happening.

The fest says one change this year, however, is that attendees are asked to hit the box office for free tickets to blocks of programming. No badge is required for this.

For those who can’t make it to Fantastic Arcade, the nonprofit Juegos Rancheros is offering a $15 bundle of five games that were commissioned for Fantastic Arcade. The bundle is for PC, Mac and Linux, and all the proceeds go to the Austin indiegame community. The games are: ■ “Alphabet”: An adorable side-scrolling game in the tradition of “Loco Roco” featuring very animated letters of the alphabet.

■ “Nium”: A post-apocalyptic roguelike that’s very easy to get into and play.

■ “Inspector Wolf in The Veggie Highschool”: A point-andclick adventure game with art that reminds you of “Parappa The Rapper.”

■ “F2oggy”: A trippy, disturbing frog fighting game about the last two living things on earth (who, obviously, must try to kill each other).

■ “Lassos”: A game about literal lassos and using them.