A Maze Finalises Programme and Presents Highlights

The 14th A Maze Festival for Games and Playful Media will start next week alongside the German Computer Game Award. The organisers have now finalised the programme and presented some highlights.

The opening performance will be Afterlife by Online Slime AFTERLIFE by Only Slime, a performance duo from Norway that operates between art, music, performance and game design. Further performances are planned by Evy Schubert & Partners in Crime, among others.

Among the highlights of the talks are the presentation by Somi, last year's winner of the Most Amazing Award, which the organisers also include the talk by Aluta Null from the A MAZE. Awards jury and a game session and artist commentary by Josef Martinovsky, the creator of the game Keep Driving. Evenfaklls part of the A Maze: The documentary films Weird Games Manifesto and The Blood on Our Controllers.

For the first time this year, A Maze is also collaborating with the Italian Cultural Institute Berlin.  At the invitation of the Italian Cultural Institute Berlin, a panel with artists from Italy will take place to shed light on new creative developments and trends in indie and arthouse gaming. The panel will address the topic of meaningful design: how can modes of expression, artistic vision, storytelling and gameplay be combined to create interactive experiences that are meaningful from both a cultural and entertainment perspective?

The A Maze. 25 programme also includes 16 workshops covering a wide range of topics: from XR programming in p5.js to the question of what the colour pink sounds like.

Last but not least, a Public Play Day is scheduled for 17 May. It's a day for the whole family to discover the alternative and independent games of A Maze. Children up to the age of twelve have free admission, family tickets are available. In addition to the games on show, there will be community talks and game design workshops for anyone interested in developing games, as well as a local multiplayer tournament, an analogue market and special craft workshops.

The A Maze. Berlin is taking place this year for the first time without the participation of founder Markus S. Wiedemann. Due to a violation of the Code of Conduct at an A Maze event in Sheffield last year, he apologised and temporarily withdrew from all public duties.