My AMAZE-ing Highlights

Hi pal!

As this issue of Indie Notebook plops into your inbox I’m on my way home from AMAZE - which is a festival in Berlin for games and playful media, there’s a bunch of weird, experimental and artsy stuff.

(pointing at the poster)

The best part of the festival was all the people. It feels like I’ve finally met the community that I belong to, we all care about the same stuff (games, art, gender issues, pop culture) and everyone is weird in their own way.

The only problem is that it’s a small community, spread out all over the whole world, so we can’t easily hang out in person and just have a fun time like we did this week.

Aside from the other attendees, these are some of my highlights from the festival.

My AMAZE-ing Highlights

👀 Henry Halfhead by Lululu

As a kid I used to make my toys climb around the house and explore every nook and cranny. In Henry Halfhead you possess everyday objects with the same kinda playfulness. But instead of exploring the physical boundaries of the space you explore the possibility space of each object.

🦩 Flock by HollowPonds

Even though this seemed to be a tiny portion of the game without much to do, it was nice and relaxing to just soar around this island in the clouds and feel the plants respond to my flying.

📝 Badabeam BADAGOLF by Katpatat

Most games in public spaces are arcade machines. But this game can be played on nearly any surface, and hypothetically an infinite number of players can join at any time they want. As long as it’s dark enough for a projector to do its magic.

The person who configures the game aims the projector at a surface and can draw the level around features of the environment. At AMAZE they used the windows of a building as platforms to jump between.

Anyone could drop in at any time by going to a web page, which immediately turned the phone into a joystick and added another character into the game.

There’s a bunch of other possibilities for games using the same configuration as well. Excited to see where this goes.

☀️ CURIOSMOS by Céline

I’ve often thought about what would make a good tamagotchi game and I’ve always thought about animals or imaginary creatures. I would never have thought of turning an entire galaxy(universe??) into a pet-like sandbox game. But it makes so much sense and it has so much charm and character even though it deals with such huge things. Very cool.

☎️ Producer 2021 by Stuffed Wombat

This type of game is SO HARD to market since it’s based on mostly still images and text. I think I have to actually play this kinda stuff to understand how nice it can be. Despite the noisy festival background I managed to be convinced to give this a proper try at home some day.

💤 It’s just a dream (don’t worry) by Laurenz Riklin & Leander Leutzendorff

You had to control the player character by pushing a head around. Nightmarish and funny. I recommend getting your own mannequin head with a wig and setting this up at home.

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I feel inspired to make smaller and weirder digital experiences now, that aren’t necessarily games. Meeting your tribe is great.

Thank you for reading! Have a creative week.