Outland Game Night goes public with Cosmo D on Oct. 13

Since April, Onassis ONX Studio in Manhattan has been hosting Outland Game Night as an invite-only experiment: a maker sits down at their own unfinished game, plays it for the room, and explains the decisions as they go. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, the series goes public for the first time.

The opening bill pairs two generations of New York game-making. Lawra Suits Clark is a co-founder of Babycastles, the volunteer-run gallery whose hunt for new arcade spaces we covered back in 2014, and a designer whose own work runs toward climate fiction, death positivity and mechanics as poetic devices. Cosmo D is the Brooklyn designer and cellist behind Off-Peak and Betrayal at Club Low, last seen building another uncanny museum; the latest, Moves of the Diamond Hand, is in early access now. Each will play sections of a game in progress while talking through choices around worldbuilding, narrative and mechanics, with a social hour after for guests to play the excerpts themselves.

Critic Brian Droitcour, who organizes the series with Sean Kennedy, is precise in the announcement about the problem this format repairs. The most ambitious interactive narrative work unfolds over hours of play, and "audiences rarely arrive prepared to spend that much time with a single work." A gallery gives these games no context; home gives them no company. The playthrough lecture is a director's commentary performed live, with the director present and interruptible.

ONX has been circling this fix all year; in June the studio put thirty screen works from games and film in one room. Outland, the nonprofit Droitcour runs for publishing and education in art and technology, is the right host for the next step. Reservations are open through the announcement's signup. If this lands before Tuesday, go.