A MAZE. / Berlin is an International Festival focusing on arthouse games and playful media. For the day experience A MAZE. / Berlin invites globally spread and diverse experimental game and VR creators, digital artists, musicians and other playful creatives from around different countries who share in an inspiring 3 days programme of talks and workshops, idea market places and knowledge bazaar the art of video games making.
The entire festival will take place online - virtual - digital - human The most revolutionary and amazing digital experience in the year 2020.
Since 2012 A MAZE. awards The Most Amazing Game. The winner is selected by an interdisciplinary, international and 100% independent jury. We extended and changed awards in the many years since, our categories are now: “Most Amazing Award”, “Human Human Machine Award”, “Long Feature Award”, “Digital Moment Award”, “Explorer Award” and “Audience Award”.
MOST AMAZING AWARD
The grand prize of the A MAZE. awards goes to the most relevant, forward-thinking interactive and playful content. We premiere the best work overall - in terms of art, innovation, music, story and interaction. the prize is dedicated to the masterpiece of the award selection that shows us a path we never walked before.
HUMAN MACHINE AWARD
This award goes to the best game that can be played by two or more people in the same room (local multiplayer), and includes some digital element – fully analog games won’t be accepted.
LONG FEATURE AWARD
This is the award for complex games and developing virtual reality worlds. Those are the ones, who challenge your life by offering immersive storytelling and much more than 2hrs gameplay.
DIGITAL MOMENT AWARD
Poems, statements, experiments, short experiences – expressions of socio-critical messages, personal or comedic life situations and feelings through an interactive medium. Maybe a sensual mechanic, a toy that gives the player a surprising twist in their experience.
EXPLORER AWARD
Go, where nobody has gone before! This is the award for all forms of experiences beyond the boundaries of contemporary ways to play or develop games. Here, we are exploring alternative controllers, interactive installations, creative coding experiments, robotics and tech performances, as well as interdisciplinary teams, collaborations with science, makers, engineers, researchers, theater and writers.
Sadly, we can just have 25 nominees, but some works still are absolutely worth checking out! Keep an eye out for the following honorable mentions:
The Humble New Talent Award highlights important new voices in the culture of games. Nominees are chosen by A Maze. and will not be awarded for one game, but their work and thoughts in general. Winners will be awarded with $15.000 to create a humble original.
Beyondthosehills
Andreas Diktyopoulos, Maria Aloupi 🇬🇷
Elizabeth Lapensée
Elizabeth Lapensée 🇺🇸
Happy Broccoli Games
Annika Maar, Joni Levinkind, Svyatoslav Petrov 🇩🇪
Mwaaba Alec Mugala
Mwaaba Alec Mugala 🇿🇲
Studio Oleomingus
Studio Oleomingus 🇮🇳
Our interdisciplinary, international and 100% independent jury has the honors to review all nominees. As every game could be the most amazing one, they also have the freedom to select the nominees’ categories, which will be revealed on April 23rd.
Nathalie Lawhead
Nathalie Lawhead is a Net-Artist and Game Designer that has been creating experimental Digital Art since the late 90’s. Past works include titles such as the IGF winning Tetrageddon games, “everything is going to be ok”, and the Electric zine maker.
Owen Hindley
Part of last years most amazing award winner Huldufugl, Owen is creating immersive theatrical environments and works with software, sound and electronics to make experiences for VR, installations, games, performances, & the web. He is also a co-founder at Horizons Studio making music-centered VR experiences.
Rayzones
Rayzones is a Moscow-based artist and game designer. they are a part of Lowpolis, a two-member team that makes things like good morning drifter,a non-racing experience with pears, and gift-exchange-machine — a stork-powered postcard exchange service.
Sarah Rudolph
Sarah Rudolph is a video game and culture journalist from Germany. For the last decade they have been talking, writing and podcasting about games, gender, politics and their cultural implications. In 2018 they co-curated the queer video game history exhibition RAINBOW ARCADE at Schwules Museum in Berlin.
Simon Bachelier
Simon works as a freelance producer for video games studios since several years. He is currently working at accidental queens after the release of three narrative games. Besides game development, he organises and produces events dedicated to the independent game developers and alternative scenes. Past and current events he did include the Notgames Fest, Zoomachines and Indiecade Europe.
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