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The super-artsy A Maze festival has begunAppear online
Appear online
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
It’s very in-character to make an experiment of the festival itself. Virtual attendees can “be a flamingo, chat with flamingo friends, shoot confetti, play soccer with watermelons, drink beer, hang out in the garden and enjoy the live stream of the full festival program”. There’s a downloadable guide to logging into that serviceon Itch.io. If you prefer, you can just enjoy the streams as normal, or at least see the awards show on Friday at 7pm GMT.
The festival is home to a variety of offbeat, often experimental games that make even some other indie games look safe and boring. RPS contributor Giada Zavarise shared a roundup of thebest games from A Maze 2019, and you can read more about one of those in Alice B’sDiary of The Longing.
This year there are workshops called “How to feel slightly less awkward in virtual and non-virtual spaces”, “Ephemera Storytelling: Designing the Feeling of Reading Other Peoples’ Letters”, and multiple talks and presentations about Black representation and decolonisation in games and the industry. It’s a forward-thinking kind of space, doing what the big leagues tend to talk about only halfheartedly.
A Maze Berlin survived one trial already, successfully crowdfunding itself when the German Senate’s Department of Culture opted not to fund it again. It’s good to see it not just surviving, but using the opportunity to try something a bit weird on top.
