NYU Game Center Showcase 2020

Welcome to the 2020 showcase! This year brought with it more challenges than any of us could have expected, and our graduating classes rose to meet those challenges at every turn. Our community, scattered by a global pandemic, came together from all over the world to produce a collection of innovative and exciting games at a time when play is paramount. These games are a mark of the resilience, passion, and creativity of our designers. While we know you can only watch this year, we encourage you to seek out and play these phenomenal games for yourself. We have so many different games in store, from hot pots to post-apocalyptic gardening, from magical capes to subway laundromats, there’s so much to offer in this year’s showcase, and we can’t wait to share it with you. Join us on Twitch on May 21, 2020 starting at 2pm.

– Connor Carson and Dylan Nelkin, MFA ‘20
Showcase Committee Chairs

2pm, hosted by Frank Lantz

• My Green Age by SCRAMP (Spencer Bernstein, Parker Crandell, McKenna Flanagan, Ajali Harrison, Christian Weinschenk & Rowan Wood) – Ten years in stasis, growing a forest from the rubble.
• Arena 3000 by Koken Ishii – Hello bugs, you are off for a new mission. Hack into some robots and use their power to eliminate your enemies. Conquer the cyber arena.
• Liville: The Eleventh Hour by Sam Grant & Oscar Ngan – A turn-based strategy game where players must devise their tactics using variable, randomly-generated weapons.
• MULTIPUCK by Martin Nayeri – After years on the age old international space station hardware, the game played by astronauts to pass the time has finally made its way back to earth…
• Portal Panic by Cyrus Rosenberg – A 4-Player procedurally generated dungeon crawler in which players are never alone.
• Oh My, Trump-Dono by Varsha Prem – A dark political satire art piece disguised as a Japanese boy’s love game.
• Birds in Circled Flight by Oliver Howell & Emma Stone – A point-and-click adventure game that follows Havari and Trevor as they travel across an eerie supernatural United States, pursued by an unseen force.

3pm, hosted by Mitu Khandaker

• Mop-a-Mia by Vera Limani – The Godfather meets Johnny Bravo meets Viscera Cleanup Detail
• Eclectic Guests by Julia Del Matto – Eclectic guests is an experimental narrative puzzle game about exploring a surreal hotel made from hand crafted paper cutouts.
• Cookie Crumbles by Clair Hayden – A FPS where you apply knockback instead of damage
• Mentally in Action by Keanan Pucci with sound design by Landon Rudd – Embody a Vietnam War veteran in this VR narrative to explore the depths of horror and trauma that armed conflict creates through PTSD flashbacks.
• Imperium by Alexandra Lu, Teague Stover & Hannah Wang – A metroidvania-inspired mystery action-platformer where you take the role of the monkey guardian, a chosen representative of your house, in the traditional Antiquity Festival. But you very quickly discover that not everything is as it seems.
• Swordswallower by Uti Azulay & Julia Del Matto – Swordswallower is a surreal, psych-goth action platformer where players traverse and fight only by throwing their massive enchanted sword.
• Soothing Seeds by Michael Moerdler-Green with music by Austin Choi – Soothing Seeds is a mobile game where you plant your own garden in order to help soothe and distract you from all of the anxieties and stressors in your life.
• Ganbatte! Love Prince in Space by Charlie Li – A gay dating sim on Earth meets a murder mystery in space.

4pm, hosted by Eric Zimmerman

• Room by Sam Liu – The unique sports game where players have to constantly adapt to a new environment every time a goal is scored.
• Caper by Alison Weiss – Caper is a 2D pixel-art stealth platformer in which you play as a magic, sentient cape, and evade detection and overcome/manipulate environment obstacles to reach the end of each level of a charming fantasy world.
• Xavalier by Eleanor Yang – A one-strike ZEN fighting game featuring minimalistic and spiritual aesthetics.
• Box of Chocolate by Abigail Austin – A competitive card game about making chocolate and losing control.
• Animal House by Noah Perloff – Animal House is a surreal puzzle/action game in which the player travels through unique animal themed levels in search of a way home.
• Ciao! by Isa Deu & John Wanamaker – A coming of age adventure game where the main mechanic is empathy.
• after us, the flood by Sammy Chuang, Rachel Geng, Valentine Morin & Ian Ouellette – Narrative and rhythm game about the safety of stillness and moving forward despite it all.

5pm, hosted by Matt Parker

• Loddlenaut by Ricardo Escobar & Jin-Young Sohn – Loddlenaut is a pet sim set on an ocean planet that is recovering from an ecological disaster.
• AiliA by Chenwei Jin & Runyu Zhong –  AiliA is a 3D perspective puzzle game where you use the reflected image of the mirror to solve puzzles.
• Archer Project by Sicheng Hu & Yuxin Huang – Trapped in a deserted castle, all you can rely on are your bow, grappling hook, and your wits.
• Hot Pot for One by Rachel Li & Qin Yin – You are at home on a cold Christmas night, stuck at home, in a foreign country. You get through it by cooking a hot dish intended for six people.
• Free Agency by Brian S. Chung & GJ Lee – Free Agency is the life simulation game where the agents gradually become self-aware and try to find meaning in their own life. Meanwhile, you gotta keep them too busy to think about it.

6pm, hosted by Clara Fernandez-Vara

• Experiment 65536 by Rachel Wang & Chuang Xie – Experiment 65536 is a series of dystopian web games created with the help of the latest AI technologies.
• Manifestation of Touch by Brianna Shuttleworth & Yuqi Zhu – Manifestation of Touch is an art house fmv game exploring the human sense of touch and longing.
• Out for Delivery by Yuxin Gao, Gus Boehling & Lillyan Ling – An interactive documentary in 360 degree video following a slice-of-life story of a food delivery courier in China on Jan 23, 2020.
• Palimpsest by Elizabeth Ballou – Palimpsest is an interactive museum/journalism game about Charlottesville and the University of Virginia’s history of white supremacy prior to the 2017 Unite the Right rally.
• The Fascination by Caroline Porter & Olivia Porter- The Fascination is a digital sculpture game, in miniature, that engages with our perception of control and belonging in a witnessed narrative.
• Picklock by Connor Carson, Mary Georgescu – An arcade-style game and alternative controller that mimics the tactile experience and precision of picking a lock.

7pm, hosted by Charles Pratt

• The Bog by Chapin Boyer, Siddarth Govindan & Virginia Wilkerson – The Bog is a 2v2 action arcade game about alien bugs fighting for control of a swamp.
• BIRFIA by Suyi Diao, Chang Li, Tammy Ma, Yiren Wang, Dannan Wen & Jin Wu – BIRFIA is a chaotic couch action game of wobbly birdies.
• Zenith Junction by Dylan Nelkin & Pathon “Palmmy” Sivarapornsakul – A digital deck-building RPG where players use tiny sets of cards to defeat massive foes.
• I Was Karara by Shuyi Chang & Gongzhu Li – As a laundry worker, you wear your customers’ clothes to fake an influencer.
• Bird Town by Danny Hawk & Michelle Bao – Bird Town is a comedy video game about a town of birds.