Congratulations to all the winners of A MAZE. / Berlin 2021!
In this year, we received 251 amazing works by international artists from 48 countries. With help of the selection committee, we nominated 25 of them and our independent jury honoured the most forward thinking, genre pushing works with one of the 5 awards. With the addition of the Audience Award, which is chosen by the community, we are presenting a total of 7.000€ in prizes. To support the creation and accomplishments of a-mazing future projects, our collaboration with Humble awarded one more prize to deserving artists, presenting 15.000€ and an exclusive deal to create a Humble Original.
We thank everyone who submitted and encourage everyone to look at all nominations, honorable mentions and submissions. As every year, the selection is hard, but our artists entries excellent. So without further ado - The winners of the 10TH INTERNATIONAL GAMES AND PLAYFUL MEDIA FESTIVAL are:
DIGITAL MOMENT AWARD
Adventures of Harriharri
HAROLD HEJAZI
Performance
“Adventures of Harriharri is an inventive, emotional, and humorous game-world specific live hip-hop performance, that explores feelings of cultural and racial alienation as a newcomer in a foreign country, and the precarity of navigating bureaucratic art institutions. The improvised nature of Harold Hejazi’s performance as Harriharri is raw, personal and at times hilarious, making the experience accessible and relatable. Adventures of Harriharri is pushing the boundaries of games, theatre and performance as a PC game created with the sole intention of being inhabited by this live performance.” Lena NW
HUMAN HUMAN MACHINE AWARD
Map to Utopia
Fringe ensemble / Platform theatre
PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet
“Map to Utopia is a series of nested conversations, superbly adapted to Zoom as a site of performance and discourse. Where the simple premise of inhabiting a neighbourhood belays a sophisticated attempt at trying to ponder grave questions about what it means to belong to a place. Part performance, part roleplay, part puzzle, it reimagines the critical role of having a voice and being heard, as its discourse spills over the proscenium of a theatre and into the site of a virtual agora. With its exalted political aspiration and the intimate lives of the imagined denizens of its four districts - it becomes a wonderful attempt at trying to hold together the collective idea of a place and its people amidst these times of mutual seclusion” Dhruv Jani
LONG FEATURE AWARD
I am dead
Hollow Ponds
PC, Nintendo Switch
“For the 'Long Feature' award, the jury decided on a game where life and death is full of little secrets to discover - carefully woven into multiple little stories. Through these stories, we as players view back on lifes already gone in a curious, melancholic and loving way. Death is not the scary enemy here but an integral part of life and the actions of passed friends still influence the world around us.” Bleeptrack
EXPLORER AWARD
Before Your Eyes
GOODBYEWORLD GAMES
PC
“The winner of this award introduces us to a difficult to execute alt-control mechanic, whilst weaving in delicate stories about love, loss, expectations and self-reflection. This experience encourages us to pay attention to tiny actions we take for granted, and even more so, the vulnerability and care we deny ourselves and others as we each strive for greatness. The game also gets harder to play as one's feelings start to interfere with the mechanic itself.” Adelle Lin
AUDIENCE AWARD
Time Bandit
Joel Jordon
PC, Mac
“Time Bandit from Joel Jordon was selected by all participants as the winner of the Audience Award out of all exhibited works”
MOST AMAZING AWARD
Stilstand
Ida Hartmann & Niila Games
PC, iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet
“Stilstand is a beautifully realized interactive graphic novel that is painfully relatable in its whimsical and absurd portrayal of anxiety, loneliness, and despair. The expressive detail in the illustrations are gritty yet stunning, lending themselves to unique interactions that advance the narrative in a captivating way. The experience balances feelings of hope and despondency with a unique sense of humour that makes players identify with this fragile limbo of feeling stuck in life. ” Lena NW
HUMBLE NEW TALENT AWARD
Colestia
David Cribb
Australia
“Games are more and more being used as a medium for sharing views and opinions, making voices heard and topics experienced with interactive arguments. This years winner stands out by not only having a strong focus on left politics through all his works, he also manages to experiment on very different styles of games. As his latest work also features an extraordinary playful method of storytelling and potential for presenting historic facts, we are delighted to see what will come out of the Humble Original deal which is awarded along with the $15k prize money!” Matthias Löwe
