​Welcome to Weird Worlds Wind-down, Des Moines edition!

​I'm in town visiting from the UK and figure it's a good opportunity to meet up with videogaming friends old and new! As is my usual approach, I figure why not bring together folks who make games that are a bit different and get them to show them to each other, oddball ideas, unpopular or dead genres, alt-ctrl or hardware hacks, strange or emerging tech, physical and tabletop games or paper prototypes, achingly indie “I made everything” production, open source, and more broadly “Weird Worlds”.

​Effectively it’s just weird, interesting, and experimental “stuff” that fits in the games context, no gatekeeping, no judgement (as long as palatable enough for a public space) the aim is to be a big tent give folks who are maybe slightly outside of industry norms a place to show why their work is artistic and interesting. Come join us, play something new, and even share a weird idea of your own if you want!

​So what’s the format?

​A micro hybrid unconference-y / expo thing (as in randomly show up and talk about or show something cool you are working on - truly tiny, just a corner of the UpDown bar) where old friends and new folk will have a couple of tables to demo their work at (with some rotation depending on demand) and just more generally chat about what they are currently making.

​I’ll curate a few projects to present and demo, but also allow for and make space for adhoc walk-in presentations of new things if you want to swing by on the breeze and decide you have something weird you want to share. Slots will be limited / first come first served, so if keen then make sure to shoot us a message to book a slot to present or demo. We’ll also have a sheet to sign up on the day if you are habitually analogue.

I'll order some pizza too so we can all have a slice while we all hang.

​Sneak Peak:

​As of now we have:

​A cyber security training game:

​https://offgridthegame.com/red-team

​an unannounced viking L-chess game

​a prototype multiplayer collaborative storytelling text adventure

​… more in the pipeline, and maybe you?!

​Drop me a line if you have a game you are making that you’d like to show, you can get me at rich at Semaeopus dot com.

​Looking forward to seeing you, please make sure to sign up so have an idea of numbers and can order some pizza for us all.