Berlin’s annual International Games and Playful-Media Festival, A Maze, once again showcased a diverse array of experiences, alternative gaming solutions, and experimental platform exchanges. The festival expanded its program and locations throughout the city, including virtual spaces. Notably, award-nominated games were made playable on a dedicated A Maze storefront on Steam, and collaborations with cultural institutions resulted in captivating on-site performances.
The festival’s main location remained Silent Green, featuring nominated games in the Betonhalle, alongside lectures, performances, an expo area, and experimental installations. In the virtual realm, a multiplayer experience replaced the A Maze Space, facilitating instant access via WebGL rather than downloadable content and VR. Lectures were streamed live on the festival site, Twitch, and YouTube, while screen-related games were available for download on Steam, offering alternative approaches to commercial gameplay.
A highlight of the conceptual offerings was the ‘Enchanted Controllers’ section, showcasing an impressive range of experimental gaming devices. These devices promoted an expanded vision of gameplay and platform understanding, with input devices designed to facilitate acoustic interactions, gesture triggering, full-body feedback, and interactive projection systems. The festival’s audience award went to a radical approach for virtual reality gaming: Non-Virtual Reality Games utilized VR controllers without a headset, enabling purely acoustic and haptic gameplay in the tracked game space.
In the performance program, VR played a major role, with live motion capture, body tracking, headset transmissions, and multiplayer scenarios for audience participation. Traditional dancers engaged in repetitive exercises simulating Machine Learning procedures, while sophisticated digital illustrations were adapted for live embodiment of Zeitgeist topics on theater stages. Through these activities and inspirations, the A Maze festival continued to explore the possibilities of playful media across digital, physical, and phygital dimensions.
