Chocobowl VIII


Friday, Feb 10, 5pm PT - Sunday Feb 12, 4pm PT

Follow Us on Twitch

Earthbound

We’ve left Square Enix for this year’s game! We’ll be ordering pizzas, taking group photos, talking to dogs, and doing combat in the mall in Earthbound! The real ones know that this game inspired Undertale, so if you were not alive when Earthbound came out for the Super Nintendo, you can at least feel like “whoa important classic game!”

We’re raising money for Trans Lifeline, a trans-led organization that connects trans people to the community, support, and resources they need to survive and thrive.


Chocobowl

Game developers vs one JRPG in 48 hours.
The whole game, without stopping, we fight to the end.
This is our video game Super Bowl.

We started Chocobowl in 2015 to replay classic JRPGs we loved as kids -- with fresh eyes now that games are our profession. What holds up? What doesn’t? What do we love, and can we capture that in our work? We’ve continued this tradition, with guests from across the games industry.

History

To kick things off for Chocobowl's inaugural year, we played through the widely beloved Final Fantasy 7.

For Chocobowl II, we played Final Fantasy 8 and began utilizing our stream for charity by raising over $11,000 USD for the AbleGamers Charity, an organization dedicated to greater accessibility in the video game space.

In Chocobowl III we stayed sequential with Final Fantasy 9. We raised over $23,000 for Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organization known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries affected by endemic diseases.

In Chocobowl IV we ventured across confusing time with Chrono Cross. We raised over $9,000 for Worldbuilders, a geek-centered nonprofit supporting humanitarian efforts worldwide.

Then came Chocobowl V, and things got very crossover. We floated into the world of Kingdom Hearts and played...ALL the games in one weekend??? We raised $5000 for Take This, providing mental health resources and support for the unique needs of the game development community.

Chocobowl VI came after a year hiatus, so we celebrated by jumping around the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario RPG!! We raised $5,309.69 for The Bail Project, combatting incarceration and racial and economic disparities in the bail system.

Adriel Wallick (she/her)

Adriel is a programmer for Innersloth currently working on Among Us! She is the organizer of Train Jam, a game designer, and a programmer. She has worked on a number of commercial releases, participates in numerous game jams, speaks internationally at events, and once spent an entire year creating a new game every week.
website / twitter

Teddy Dief (they/them)

Teddy Dief is an independent videogame director and writer of We Are OFK. They co-developed Hyper Light Drifter, Fitz Packerton and the Playscape Idle Thumbs podcast. Formerly a Creative Director at Square Enix Montréal, designer at Disney and game narrative researcher at USC. They are a co-founder of Los Angeles artist collective Glitch City.
website / twitter


Hosts

Every year we have an incredible group of hosts who join our quest to raise money for charity by playing an entire JRPG in one sitting. They come from all corners of the games industry, to crack jokes, critique game design, and bravely accept dares from the audience!



Anthony Carboni

Anthony is a host, writer, and actor in Los Angeles. He's currently the host of the Emmy-nominated Star Wars Show and Science and Star Wars for Lucasfilm.
website / twitter

Erika Ishii (they/she/any)

Erika is best known for their voiceover work, starring as Valkyrie in Apex Legends, Ana Bray in Destiny 2, Lumu in Halo Infinite, Kitsune in Call of Duty: Warzone, and more. Erika can also be seen rolling with Dimension 20, Critical Role, The McElroy Family, and College Humor’s Dropout.
website / twitter





Greg Batha

Greg is an independent game developer with a deep love for UI/UX design. His past work includes designing and developing the UI for Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator and Heroforge.
website / twitter

Jared Rosen

Jared is a multi-award-winning author and narrative designer, with credits including Cards Against Humanity, Dream Daddy, The Muppets, Hot Pepper Gaming, and the NYT bestselling The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook: Sweet Treats For The Geek In All Of Us. He is currently the lead skins writer for League of Legends, and badly needs a haircut.
website / twitter





Professor (they/them)

Prof has spent the past 14+ years as a professional game designer, working in both AAA (Destiny 2, Sunset Overdrive) and indie games (Hyper Light Drifter). They're also an alum of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. Professor loves helping out mid career designers, and thinking really hard about game design all the time.
website / twitter

Sarah Elmaleh (she/her)

Sarah Elmaleh is an actor, director and consultant for interactive performance. She can be heard in games such as Halo Infinite, Gears 5, and Pyre, and her voice directing credits include Fortnite and The Red Lantern. She is also a passionate labor advocate for actors and devs alike, and recurring director/co-host of the IndieCade Awards.
website / twitter





Tyler Hutchison

Tyler is the director/Lead Developer of Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator and co-creator of VR Infinite Gesture.
website / twitter

Chris Lucca (he/him)

Chris is a composer and sound designer based out of Los Angeles. In early 2016 Chris released his first game with indie game developer Skatanic Studios, RPG Tycoon, and its subsequent expansion, RPG Tycoon: Supply and Demand. He has been touring internationally since 2009 with his band Suburban Legends, as well as a variety of other ska, pop, and contemporary acts.
website / twitter




Friends

We have an incredible group of people who help us create all of the beautiful imagery that you see during the stream.



Fred Wood

Fred is an independent game developer and general maker of things, best known for the LOVE series and his work on Deltarune. When he's not in the middle of crafting a needlessly complicated solution to a simple problem or archiving a piece of pop culture ephemera, he can be found rambling about the things he loves on Twitter.
website / twitter

Nafisah Tung (they/them)

Character designer, concept artist, fashion lover, and devoted husband. Naf is generally an online hermit but you can find them on Tumblr and Instagram.
website / twitter





Daniel Lyons

Daniel is a freelance Pixel Artist, Illustrator & Animator based in Brisbane. He has created beautiful Chocobowl graphic design over the years!
website / twitter





- - - - -