BREAKOUT BABY
A free demo turns Pac-Man into first-person baby horror
BREAKOUT BABY, from developer STH and publisher Assemble Entertainment, hands you an infant and a maze
Radar
Short dispatches on experimental, independent and artist-driven games. Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Wristwork
Wristwork rebuilt its dead pigeon romance on open maps
The London studio's lockdown-era collectathon returns at true city scale — hundreds of thousands of birds, and one of them is your soulmate.
Zeitgeist Studio
A cult that scores your smile heads to gamescom
Zeitgeist Studio's WINGS-winning debut makes performed happiness a survival mechanic, ahead of a Q1 2027 release through HYPER REAL.
CONTROL
CONTROL filled a Peckham gallery with unplayable games
OHSH Projects argued that videogame aesthetics already remade contemporary art, and staged the show itself like a game.
Xiner Lan
Invented Olympic sports demand both hands in Qilinic Games
Xiner Lan's UCLA MFA thesis installation stages pseudo-sports on a twin-joystick arcade cabinet, a ritual for building 'the great body.'
Alina Nazmeeva
Alina Nazmeeva's YUHA builds a world from oil and myth
The simulation-based solo show opens August 28 at MANA Contemporary in Chicago, with a panel alongside longtime collaborator Yvette Granata.
Paloma Dawkins
A tarot deck grows out of Paloma Dawkins's videogames
The Fool's Journey converts characters from Museum of Symmetry and the Apocablyss universe into 22 archetypes, debuting at MUTEK Forum August 26.
cdmx.exe
Mexico City street legends turn up as low-poly game skins
The anonymous account cdmx.exe models the capital's characters in PS2-era polygons, and the audience keeps asking where to download them.
tiengiungtong
tiengiungtong's rabbit hole is lined with bodhisattvas
Another chorus of can-I-play-this for a dreamlike point-and-click that does not exist yet
OTHERWORLDS
OTHERWORLDS won A MAZE's Human Human Machine Award
Sophia Bulgakova's mixed-reality ritual, drawn from Ukrainian pagan practice, took the Berlin festival's prize for collective presence.
Lucid Blocks
Dollar-store junk becomes the item sprites of Lucid Blocks
Eric Alfaro photographed household clutter into a Minecraft that runs on dream logic
Barragán
A crucifix USB necklace carries a Barragán video game
THE END IS NEAR, made for Victor Barragán's label by Alex Sinh Nguyen, ships as $270 jewelry.