Busan Indie Connect Festival 2023 (BIC Festival 2023) started today, kicking off a weekend-long celebration of indie games.

The event runs from 25th to 27th August, with the first day being business centric before the event opens its doors to the public on the 26th.

Located in Busan, South Korea, BIC Festival 2023 is the ninth installment of the indie-centric event, with a marathon theme under the slogan Run Your Indie Spirit.

This divides games into different areas labeled Half-Course, Full-Course and Ultra Course depending on the kind of difficulty visitors are looking for in their indie titles.

There’s also the event’s Indie Game Parade- featuring various beloved indie game characters as well as Augmented Reality and Virtual Influencer Zones, so developers get a chance to get the word out on all their projects.

While it’s organized locally by Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Hyung-jun), Busan Information Industry Promotion Agency (CEO Jung Moon-seop), and the Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee (Chairman Seo Tae-gun), the event itself also has international partners in Taipei Game Show, BitSummit, WePlay, Singapore Game Association and gamescom asia.

BIC Festival Organizing Committee Chairman Seo Tae-gun even highlighted the vetting process that goes into putting together an event like this one.

“We have a total 203 games on exhibit this time”, he says. “These games’ developers took time and effort to make these games. For two months, 30 to 40 jury members put together to select them. So I believe all the games exhibited here are outstanding. I’m not in the position to say which game is better and which game is worse. But what I wanted to mention is that each of the games have their own stories, so in the initial stage of development there are some programs that support developers in different stages. And when I see the work is being made and getting sponsors and funding”.

He also highlighted the sheer diversity of stories behind game developers, highlighting one that might resonate with anyone who played games as a child:

“There is a company called 2si. The developers have a full time job and he uses his extra hours he spent time for game development. So the reason why it is called 2si which means 2am, because his mom would come to his room and ask him to sleep”, he says.

“So I could see how he was so passionate about indie games. So all these games represent the passion and love of indie gamers. So I can say that what I am always surprised about is that with the development of BIC, you can see so many local game developing as well  there are great local indie games developers so I strongly recommend you to check it out”.

“Indie games are all about attractiveness and the characters in the game are very attractive. So you can see the attractiveness of the game. So if you don’t have time to enjoy all the games then maybe  you should focus on local game developers”.