A booklet extract of ‘A Rainbow for Amala’ – an escape game in a book for 8-11 year olds. Interactive puzzles and animated videos bring to life an illustrated storybook about three children from inner city Birmingham encountering the effects of climate breakdown.

A visitor to the installation is simultaneously ventriloquist and dummy — reading a text aloud in another’s voice and lending their own voice to a future visitor. These disembodied voices belong to an archive. A chorus of previous visitors grows over the length of the festival, creating an experience that is dependent both on each individual, and an accumulating history.

Co-created with the International Slavery Museum’s Young Ambassadors, this game explores the people, events, movements and objects which help us to understand the story of Civil Rights. Encounter protest, meet activists, find hope in solidarity, come together in celebration and confront some of the injustice that continues to exist today.

In co-open, a kid is sent by their grandmother on their first independent grocery run at a local community store. It’s a slice of life adventure game that touches on supportive social systems and depicts casual queer representation.

A frenetic, cooperative alt.ctrl installation powered by real-world statistics – in this case, 100 years of UK election data.

DATA/POINTS is playable data installation using real world statistics – in this case, 100 years of UK election information – to generate stages of frenetic, cooperative button mashing. This edition – ‘Political Party’ – is powered by the House of Commons Library report ‘UK Election Statistics: 1918-2021: A century of elections’ (2021), and contains information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

Social media companies process billions of posts on any given day. They use AI to automate the screening and moderation of this material, but still rely on human moderators to validate and ensure the accuracy of the algorithm. This approach seems to offer the best of both worlds – the speed of AI and the eye of context and meaning of a human – but what is the experience of the human worker in a system designed to function at the speed of AI? This interactive game draws attention to the high-pressure working environment many content moderators experience on the job.

Commissioned by Science Gallery Dublin and created with ADAPT, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for AI Driven Digital Content Technology.

GerryMander is a simple puzzle game designed to show how gerrymandering can be used to rig an election. In GerryMander, you draw voting districts to favour your party and win the election. Players can use real-world strategies like packing (Squishing opposing voters into a single district) and cracking (Breaking up key voter groups into separate districts) to beat each puzzle. With these strategies players can see how Gerrymandering works while learning about how it happens in the real world.

How Many Chairs to Build the Future? sits somewhere between choreography, sculpture, conversation and play. A simple set of rules turns 50 chairs into an environment for people of all ages to think and talk about big ideas in simple, physical ways.

MIND PSYCHOMETRY is a personality test designed to coerce, extort, and ultimately dehumanize applicants. This version is inert; made safe for recreational consumption. However, the technologies demonstrated within are far from unique. No tool is used without intent, no choice made in a vacuum. Play at your discretion.

Orwell’s Animal Farm is a narrative game based on George Orwell’s renowned satire of totalitarian regimes. Throw out exploitative farmers. Found a new Republic. Guide its leaders. All animals are equal. You decide which animals are most equal of all.

A 360° interactive documentary exploring the mundanity and struggles of gig economy workers in rapidly urbanizing Beijing.

Playing Democracy is a giant multiplayer game of Pong, exploring the principles of democracy. Structured as a competitive game of Pong, the audience controls the game paddles using their body movement tracked by a camera. Each time a player scores a point, they can choose to modify 3 rules in the game which in turn changes the game environment. The rules are simple and are also, in essence, the principles of democracy.

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Pourparlers is a coopetitive survival game about democracy for four players.

What is Question Project?

Question Project is a tool that does not provide answers.
Question Project results from a question asked by an unknown pedestrian.
Question Project begins with a question that generates another question.
Such as What would you ask yourself? What would you ask your government?
Question Project is a large sign with wheels and moveable letters, where we install questions provided by pedestrians.

Question Project is a conversation with a stranger in the street who decides to think about a question.
Question Project is responsive.
Its letters move, allowing participants to write questions of up to 100 characters.

Question Project seeks no answer.

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Rules & Roberts is light on mechanics, focuses on collaborative storytelling, and simplifies the work of the Dungeon Master.

The players are adventures determined to bring justice, peace and freedom in a high fantasy universe. Being a radically democratic group, all of their actions are methodically debated and agreed upon.
Instead of individualistically declaring their actions, each player proposes motions that are discussed, amended, and approved by the whole group following the Robert’s Rules of Order process.

Rules & Roberts will run periodically in the Parlour Games Arena in the exhibition. Times to be announced.

Sculpture Playground is a set of brightly coloured wooden objects which invite participants to test their potential for play and temporary sculpture making. Designed to be rolled, rocked, wheeled, stacked and combined into multiple ever-changing arrangements.

A game about privilege, discrimination, negotiation, and subjugation of power.

Players are aliens embroiled in a power struggle. Go to school. Get educated. Get a job. Get money. Buy food and shelter. Meanwhile, money is also used to gain power. You control the very rules of the game, but bribery and corruption is possible. Those who have fewer arms, eyes, or no eye-stalks will be discriminated against. By contrast, the most advantaged characters can enjoy ‘stamping down’ on everyone else.

On a large open medium, participants are encouraged to draw a dot on a map in coloured ink, and then add a related fact or wish in the same colour. The colour they choose reflects the fact that they add about the city they are building. Slowly, our shared city comes to life – including its powerful public transport network.

It reads as a folk-tale and sounds like a nursery rhyme. This is the story of a pompous King, so oblivious to the needs of his subjects as to throw a party to keep them calm and obedient. They played Statues all night long. At dawn the King was naked.

The Best Thing is a series of interesting choices.

The Redistricting Game is an early serious game to teach the basics of redistricting. The game effectively simulates the complex processes of congressional redistricting, beginning with a responsive 2D map-drawing puzzle, followed by role-playing to usher the map through the legislative and judicial branches of government.

We Dwell in Possibility is a queer garden simulation playground about planting bodies and ideas, and watching them grow into a kinetic landscape. Developed by Robert Yang, visuals by Eleanor Davis, audio by aya, with additional dev by Sophia Foster-Dimino and Andy Grier.

It is a beautiful day in Rome, and you are a terrible Senator.

Play through two days and make dubious decisions so you can Totally Stab Caesar!

Immerse yourself in a historical-ahistorical comedy game, featuring everyone’s fave Hench Man Mark Antony, Asterix-inspired gladiators, and of course, lots of honeyed dormice.