Friends, we are so excited to announce the first [untitled games event] weekender, a three-day convening of experimental games and playful arts in Amsterdam.

It’s the [uge] you know and (hopefully) love, just luxuriously spread out over a weekend of programming. A gathering of 20+ works that reflect on games' eerie materiality and poetic potential, their ability to conjure both dreams and disquiet.

Alongside: a full program of workshops, talks, and collective playthroughs designed to invite contemplation and solidarity. All events free and BYO. 

Here’s what the first UGE Weekender looks like: 

FRIDAY 18 SEPTEMBER
[untitled games event] at the Rijksakademie

An evening of games and talks on the radical plasticity of play, hosted at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. 10+ games and works featured. RSVPs recommended.

SATURDAY 19 SEPTEMBER
UGE Workshop DLC

A relaxed afternoon of workshops and collaborative sessions. Let’s build some worlds and make game poems together!
Spaces limited, RSVPs necessary.
UPDATE: All workshops are now fully booked.  

SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER
[untitled games event] #9: “dreams and disquiet” 

A classic UGE under the train tracks at our regular venue. Walk-in, no RSVPs needed. 7 works and a few other surprises.

You’ll find all the details below. 

This is new (and a bit scary) for us, so please help us spread the word. Tell all your friends, bring all your friends. When they ask: “…but how is it art?”, answer simply “YES.”

We can’t wait to see you all and experience this weekend together. 

Day 1: Friday 18 September

[untitled games event] at the Rijksakademie

Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Sarphatistraat 470
15:00 - 20:30 

Entrance free. RSVP here.
Bring drinks and snacks to share! 

Join us on Friday 18 September for a very special edition of [untitled games event], hosted at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten.  

We’ve put together a packed afternoon and evening of experimental games and interactive art that explores the radical plasticity of play.

Programme

Walk-in from 15:00 onwards.
Games playable from 15:30 - 20:00 

We will have some free drinks and snacks available - we encourage you to bring more to share!  

16:30 - 16:50 | Reworlding Ramallah
Reworlding Ramallah is a collection of stories born of a series of science fiction writing workshops led by Callum Copley at Disarming Design in Birzeit, a few miles north of Ramallah, Palestine. In this (expanded) talk, Callum will explore how gameplay, collaborative storytelling, and world-building exercises can serve as powerful tools for imagining decolonial futures.

17:00 - 17:20 | procuring estrogen for your toxic slime girlfriend
Performer, electronics artist and game engineer NB Spiders, whose research focuses on queer forms of play and crip empowerment, and game designer BigBeefySharkBaby will lead a collective playthrough of their game procuring estrogen for your toxic slime girlfriend.  

17:30 - 17:45 | [[rect*]]repair and new forms of pervasive play in China  
Media artist Joanna Lyu will introduce [[rect]]*repair, an art-game collective focusing on experimental games, community events and playful media, and her observations on emergent forms of pervasive play in China today. 

18:30 - 20:00 | The UGE “Talks Block”
Micro talks by Lucas Lugarinho, Nestor Sire, amy pickles, Lotte Louis de Jong, Jordan Magnuson, Case Jernigan, and Team PASSPHRASE!

Featured works

Bub, by Paperfrog

The story of an artist turning his memories into art while he still can. From ink drawings to rough cut paper puppets to abstracted slashes of paint - a living, breathing game world.

procuring estrogen for your toxic slime girlfriend, by NB Spiders

slime gf is not feeling super hot today.. help her procure some estrogen, fight off creepy skelington dudes, visit a graveyard, get all wet and fulfill the ancient prophecy~

❗Creator NB Spiders will also introduce their wareware game engine (“build your dream game and get on with your life!”)

Coyote Time, by Alice Bucknell

Explore an “infinite night” in this new eco sci-fi text-based adventure game whose title marks the moment in a video game when a character leaps off a cliff and is suspended in midair, unsure of what comes next. 

Game Poems Magazine

A peer-reviewed, open-access, online literary magazine dedicated to exploring the artistic and poetic potential of short-form videogames. MAYBE (no promises!) we’ll get a small preview of Issue 2? 

Dissenting Decisions, by amy pickles

Dissenting Decisions is a collective experience; a work-in-progress card game in which we share the pain and pleasures of working with others. A fictitious collective of cultural workers try out actions needed for their group to reach consensus.

Fantasy Lane, by Lotte Louise de Jong

Fantasy Lane examines how digital desire and the elusive dream of homeownership collide in a financialized housing market, offering a commentary on pleasure, anxiety, and the shifting meaning of ""home"" amid today's housing crisis.

Grinding Choices, by Nestor Sire and Steffen Köhn

An interactive ethnography of Cuba’s extraordinary play-to-earn games economy, disguised as a 1990s solo adventure role-playing game.

PASSPHRASE, by Dmytro Tentiuk, Demi van Kuijk, Erwin Hoogerwoord, Emily W. Bernstein, and Anneke ter Schure

A game inspired by TikTok “voice challenges” that invites you to give away your voice (if you dare), challenging you to beat the system and claim it back.

Ghost Rococó, by Lucas Lugarinho

Back by popular demand! Ghost Rococó follows the journey of a stray bullet coming to terms with its own existence as an optimally designed tool for violence. Don’t miss Lucas’ micro talk, a sequel to his June 2026 presentation.

Day 2: Saturday 19 September

[untitled games event] workshop DLC

Tussen de Bogen 46
14:00 - 18:30 

All workshops are free. RSVPs necessary. Limited spots.
Bring drinks and snacks to share! 

Join us on Saturday 19 September for a relaxed, collaborative afternoon of making games together. We’re offering two workshops over the afternoon: one on collaborative worldbuilding, the other on the poetic potential of short games. 

These are open to everyone: no programming experience or previous game-making experience is necessary. 

WORKSHOP 1 | 14:00 - 16:00
“Hybrid Puppeteering: Collaborative NPC Design to Build Immersive Playable Worlds”

DESIGNED BY 
Shaman Garage, hosted by Arash Hosseini, Yuxuan Zhao and Pablo San Gregorio

As part of Shaman Garage’s series on collaborative world-building workshops, this session explores polyphonic storytelling through NPC (Non-Player Character) design. The workshop is purely hands-on, inviting participants of all backgrounds to collectively craft character appearances and personalities through a playful approach.

Using tangible materials such as stickers, crayons, templates, and cards, the process encourages experimentation and ensures accessibility regardless of technical skill. The characters created are digitized by a custom, locally-run algorithm and transformed into Godot “Packed Scenes,” ready to be arranged into a game level.

Open to everyone: no programming experience or previous game-making experience necessary. 

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
15 spots are available on a first-come-first-served basis. RSVP below.  

WHAT YOU’LL NEED
Nothing! Everything needed will be provided on-site

GOOD TO KNOW
We expect this workshop to be fully booked. If you have RSVPed and cannot make it, please let us know as soon as you can so we can pass on your spot to someone else. 

📝THE WORKSHOP IS NOW FULLY BOOKED.
To be added to the waiting list, send an email to [email protected]

WORKSHOP 2 | 16:30 - 18:30
“What is a game poem and how do you make one?” 

DESIGNED AND HOSTED BY
Jordan Magnuson,
Founder and Managing Editor, Game Poems Magazine 

Have you ever considered that videogame creation might be approached as an accessible creative practice similar to writing a short poem? Not all videogames need to be made by large teams with a focus on spectacle and impressive graphics--videogames can also be tiny, constrained, and personal. Come to this workshop to learn more about what "game poems" are all about, and make a game poem of your own using accessible web-based tools. 

Open to everyone: no programming experience or previous game-making experience necessary. 

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
15 spots are available on a first-come-first-served basis. RSVP below.  

WHAT YOU’LL NEED
Bring your own laptop! 

GOOD TO KNOW
We expect this workshop to be fully booked. If you have RSVPed and cannot make it, please let us know as soon as you can so we can pass on your spot to someone else. 

📝 THE WORKSHOP IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
To be added to the waiting list, send an email to [email protected]

Day 3: Sunday 20 September

[untitled games event] #9: “dreams and disquiet”

Tussen de Bogen 46
16:30 - 19:00 

Entrance free.
Bring drinks and snacks to share! 

A “classic” UGE to cap the weekend. All the usual (and unusual) trappings. 

The 7+ works at [untitled games event] #9 show us games' eerie materiality and poetic potential, how they can refract half-remembered spaces and feelings into both unsettling worlds and (queer) exuberance.    

Featured Works and Talks 

I’M YOUR HOST, by Calligram Studio 

An audio deduction game where you have one task: restore a lost podcast. Use your custom OS to rebuild the timeline, fix transcripts, and dig through interview outtakes. Why were the episodes destroyed? Who is covering the truth? And what happened to the host?

TALK: Céline Zaepffel on Dutch Board Games in the Industrial Revolution 

Games of the Goose, Owl Games, Harlequin Games – the Rijksmuseum holds more than 400 such board games, created between 1830 and 1914, when Europe was industrializing at breakneck speed. But these colourful pastimes were more than children’s toys: they were mirrors of a world in transition, tools of imagination and instruction spreading the ideas and values of a new age. Yet behind their cheerful imagery lay the contradictions of the Industrial Revolution: war, colonial expansion and antisemitism crept into the playroom, normalizing the darker ideologies of modernity.

Scholar Céline Zaepffel introduces her book The Goose and the Machine, which uncovers how nineteenth-century board games captured both the dreams and the disquiet of their time – teaching generations to play, imagine and believe in a world remade by progress.

Diluvium, by Barbara Mathijssen and Max Kuilman

Explore the salvaged internet of a post-apocalyptic utopian society: knowledge and communications are exchanged through bird rings, a new world wide web woven along bird migration patterns.

This first entry in their worldbuilding project Diluvium is a hybrid zine and hypertext fiction piece. It details a future in which the Earth's sea level has risen dramatically and humanity has moved onto the floating remains of what once was, adrift.

All Will Rise, by Speculative Agency 

A river burns. A god dies. A city awakes.

All Will Rise is a game about taking billionaires to court for destroying the planet. It’s a crime thriller about the murder of a river, with deep deck-building mechanics. It’s a revenge fantasy against the powerful that gets personal, wild, and messy.

Paketown, by Nestor Sire and collaborators 

A game that simulates the historical development of the Paquete Semanal, Cuba’s famous alternative entertainment media distribution network. You will start your business renting out novels and will eventually arrive at distributing media files via hard disks. Based on biographical interviews with paqueteros and developed by one of the island’s first independent game studios, PakeTown invites players to become entrepreneurs in the informal Cuban media sector and experience this history of alternative media distribution themselves.

Welcome to Spring Flounder Cove, by BigBeefySharkBaby 

Welcome to Spring Flounder Cove is about going fishing, making music and being in love with your best friend. Make your way through the woods, squeeze a frog, catch a fish with this little drum machine.

We hope to see you everywhere.
Forwards, reposts, and shares appreciated <3

If you have any thoughts or feedback, we would love to hear from you.

Until the 18th,

[uge]