A MAZE. / Berlin 2026

Come experience Game Poems Magazine, a new online literary magazine dedicated to exploring the artistic and poetic potential of short-form games by publishing new work directly in a playable format. Experience personal short-form games and hear from the founding editor, as well as the magazine contributors. 

Hosted by Jordan Magnuson

With a.o.:
Tereza Kotěšovcová
Adam Pype
Isaque Sanches
Brendan Allen (remote)
Kaitlin Bonfiglio (remote)
Caitlin DeRosa (remote)
Ash Rezvani (remote)

Content warnings
No graphic content, but games shown may include difficult topics including (but not limited to) death, depression, sexual pain and medical gaslighting.
Written references to sexual trauma, pain with sex, and medical trauma. no graphic imagery will be shown.

The Line Is the Game is a short, comedy live-action role-playing game that turns the everyday frustration of waiting into something playful and a little chaotic. Get your role from the ticket machine and join the line — possibly for a bathroom, possibly for art. Complete your task and use your one-time superpower to change the line before the doors finally open. Tired of waiting? Step out, come back as someone new, and see whether how you wait is a more interesting story than what you’re waiting for.

Game design Jana Romanova
Graphic design Elisa Piazzi
Device artisan Pablo San Gregorio

The Line is the Game was originally created for No Quarter 2025 at NYU Game Center

This game is a standalone game that any festival visitor can join to play.
To make it even more exciting: The game will be played before the labRats performance, the queue that will form will define how you enter the space.

Content warning
We encourage everyone to play with respect and kindness to each other.

Experience this 45-minute interactive lecture performance. Flesh Network is a live demonstration that presents a history of the Internet as a sound technology, focusing on the ways that disability influenced the design of communication systems.

XR History Award Nominee

Limited number of Player Tickets available (see below for more info).

Despite all your rage, you are still just a rat in a cage. Luckily, you're also a rat who's been outfitted with a neural implant that allows you to communicate telepathically with the other rats in your cage. Maybe that'll help.

labRats is a digitally native interactive performance by the award-winning duo cirqueSaw. Pulling equally from classic games, silent films, and a generous helping of Lewis Carroll, the piece seeks to blur the line between reality and unreality, between wonder and horror. Audiences play as lab rats in an experiment beyond their control, who have to work together to take control of their lives. Whether they choose to escape, take over the lab, or deconstruct the fabric of the reality of their experience itself is entirely up to them.

There are two ways of experiencing this performance:
- As a player: please get your Player Ticket (limited number) from the ticket shop (only with valid festival ticket or pass): https://weeztix.shop/gteqvq9r
- As a viewer: just come to the Kuppelhalle!

Note: that Player Tickets are limited, so please only take one when you are dedicated to join, including bringing your own laptop or tablet with keyboard

There are two labRats performance dates:
Thursday 14 May: 20:00-21:30
Saturday 16 May: 12:00-13:30