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# Exactly two playable games made it into the Venice Biennale
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/two-playable-games-venice-biennale/
- Published: 2026-09-17T23:29:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T23:29:45.000Z
- Description: Elliott Burns went hunting across every national presentation and came back with KAZANA, Bulgaria's copper-clad political compass quiz.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: Venice Biennale, Art Games, Installation, exhibition, political games, contemporary art, Ukraine, Game Art

Elliott Burns spent part of the summer walking the 61st Venice Biennale with one question: where are the games? The running count, posted to [SideQuest](https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqBA1oiMwr/?ref=killscreen.com), the research program Burns writes on [artist-produced computer games](https://sidequestosp.substack.com/), came to exactly two playable works across every pavilion and collateral palazzo. One of them is *Black Myth: Wukong*, parked in the Chinese Pavilion's expo-style Dream Stream show with a life-size figurine of its monkey protagonist. That leaves one.

0:00 

/0:40 

1× 

Trailer for Veneta Androva’s **Spray and Pray*, one of the four films feeding **KAZANA*. Courtesy the Bulgarian Pavilion.

The one is *KAZANA*, the connective tissue of [*The Federation of Minor Practices*](https://www.bulgarianpavilionvenice.art/en?ref=killscreen.com), the Bulgarian Pavilion's fictional research lab that looks back at our present from a kinder future. Four newly commissioned films by Gery Georgieva, Veneta Androva, Maria Nalbantova and Rayna Teneva feed a copper-clad gaming station built by Zlatka Uzunova and the [virtual and augmented reality lab](https://sofiatechlabs.bg/en/laboratory/virtual-augmented-reality/?ref=killscreen.com) Uzunova leads at Sofia Tech Park. Burns calls it a "walkable political compass quiz": you drift through canyons and caves answering ostensibly ethical questions until the system hands you a personality badge. I. The show runs through November 22, and you don't even need the flight: the game is [on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bg.sofiatechlabs.varlab.kazana&ref=killscreen.com).

The third sighting borrows the grammar without the controller. In Pinchuk Art Centre's [*Still Joy*](https://pinchukartcentre.org/en/exhibitions/still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world-biennale-arte-2026?ref=killscreen.com), Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk's [*Open World*](https://ym-rk.com/Open-World-1?ref=killscreen.com) (2025) sends a teenager displaced from Zaporizhzhia back home through a robot dog, staged as a livestream.

Two playables across dozens of national pavilions is a finding, not a fluke. Consoles keep [moving into the museum](https://www.killscreen.com/achiampong-the-gaming-room/) , but the Biennale proper still treats play as garnish. Which makes it funny that the most convincing political work there is a quiz—we have argued before about [where most political games go wrong](https://www.killscreen.com/where-most-political-games-go-wrong/), and KAZANA's answer is to stop lecturing and start cooking.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/kazana-station-daylight.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/pavilion-copper-portal.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/pavilion-screening-room.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/bulgarian-pavilion-artists.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/kazana-screen-closeup.jpg)

Inside **The Federation of Minor Practices*, and the artists with curator Martina Yordanova. Installation photos courtesy the Bulgarian Pavilion; group photo: Maximilian Pramatarov.

SideQuest counted two playable games in the whole Biennale. Killscreen has been counting them everywhere else since 2010—the free newsletter brings you the work the institutions miss.

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