The Amatryx Lab is thrilled to partner with Jacoby Loury (UB Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology) and Buffalo Game Space to host a youth summer workshop in August! The workshop will be a 3 day event training high school students in game development with no prior experience required. The workshop is open to all Buffalo and WNY high school students.

Details and registration form available through the QR code on the flyer! Email Jacoby Loury (jaloury@buffalo.edu) or Cody Mejeur (codymeje@buffalo.edu) with any questions, and please spread the word!

The Amatryx Lab had another great year in 2025-2026 with our game nights, various research and game dev projects, and community programming. I (Cody) have been bad about posting our end of semester lab meeting selfies, so I’m including a couple of those here to celebrate the awesome people and the work we’ve all done. We have our biweekly lab meetings on Discord, and these are screenshots of a couple recent semesters.

The lab has a number of ongoing projects we’ll be working on this summer, including hopefully some exciting announcements soon! Stay tuned for more updates!

Dr. Cody also had the honor of being a Contemporary Narrative plenary speaker at the Narrative 2026 conference, where they also launched their professional robe attire. Their talk, “Trans/Narrative/Queer/Play,” was drawn from their monograph project of the same title, and focused on narrative as a meaning-making and reality-building process with emergent and quantum possibilities. Below are a couple of images from the talk and the pedagogy lunch, which Dr. Cody also spoke at.

Please join the Amatryx lab for our March game night, featuring a game studies research talk on Persona 4 with grad student Tom Kline, and a streaming and gameplay session of Dead By Daylight! This game night is exciting as an introduction to a new lab project focusing on game studies research with Dead By Daylight in collaboration with Daniel Fandino at University of Central Florida. The project will consist of ongoing streaming and community chat events about the game, culminating in an edited collection to be published by McFarland Press. More details about the collection and its call for papers will be available in the coming weeks!

As always, light refreshments and snacks provided.

Please join the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio for our first game night of Spring semester on Thursday, February 19 from 6-8 PM in CFA 235. Each game night is open to any community members who want to join. The first half of the time is dedicated to playing/watching/reading/listening to in-progress work from a lab or community member with feedback, and the second half is dedicated to playing something together for fun. For this first night, we’re playing games recently made at Global Game Jam 2026 including lab alumna Joan Nobile’s A Shroud of Rime. Then we will play games from the Resident Evil franchise to celebrate the upcoming release of the new Resident Evil Requiem. Snacks and light refreshments provided.

Our future game nights for Spring 2026 are:

Thursday, March 26 featuring Persona 4 research by Tom Kline and group play of Dead by Daylight

Tuesday, April 28 coinciding with CFA’s Spring Into Art event and finally featuring the launch of the Amatryx Lab’s game, Trans Folks Walking

We are excited to host Global Game Jam again this year from January 30-February 1 with our partners Buffalo Game Space, UB Game Dev Club, Media Study, and the Center for the Arts. And we’re thankful for food from our sponsors including Sunshine Vegan Eats!

Global Game Jam is the biggest annual game jam and is a great opportunity to make a game either solo or with team members in just three days. No prior experience required—if you’re interested in games and want to help make one, please join us! Professional mentors will be on hand all weekend. Snacks and food for most meals will be provided–specifically, we will definitely have catered food for dinners all three days, and are hoping to have donuts for breakfast and sandwiches for lunches too. Make sure to register for free using the link or QR code on the flyer. Same day registration is allowed (but please register in advance to help us with food orders!), and participants can come and go all weekend as needed.

We’re excited to host two more game nights for Fall 2025. The November game night will be tomorrow, Tuesday November 18 at 6 PM in CFA 235, and will feature the thesis game “starcrossed” by lab member Dana Hunt-Locklear, followed by a fun murder mystery game inspired by Clue run by Eliana Freeman. Cream Cheese Pumpkin cookies and drinks provided!

Our final game night of 2025 will be Tuesday, December 9 from 6-8 PM in CFA 235, and will feature course game projects from Advanced Game Design, Game Development, Virtual Worlds, the UB Game Dev Club, and more! Anyone who has a game or virtual reality project they’d like to playtest before final submission is welcome to share their game, just get in touch with a lab member and we’ll get you added to the list.

Huge thanks to everyone who has worked with us on projects in 2025, and we’re looking forward to sharing more information on an exciting grant project, work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, and youth game design camps we’ll be running in 2026. And stay tuned for flyers for Global Game Jam running again at UB on January 30-February 1, 2026!

Amatryx is back and thrilled to announce our Fall 2025 game nights! The first one is tomorrow, Tuesday September 30, featuring a playtest session of Tom Kline’s Paradise Theater game, followed by playing the RPG Off (Fangamer 2025). Snacks will be provided–brownies this time!

The lab is also recruiting new members. We have shared projects in the lab to work on (including some exciting new ones coming together) and it’s a space for people to work on their own projects as well. Time commitment is scalable to your capacity and interest!

Lastly, mark your calendars for the rest of our Fall game nights:

Thursday, October 30, 5-8 PM in CFA 235 (coinciding with Art in the Open in the CFA)

Tuesday, November 18, 6-8 PM in CFA 235: featuring a murder mystery game with lab member Eliana, and lab member Dana’s thesis game for playtesting.

Tuesday, December 9, 6-8 PM in CFA 235: featuring a playtest session of lab member Famous’ game project, as well as open playtesting for final game projects.

Please join us for the next Amatryx Game Night taking place Thursday, April 17 from 6-8 PM in CFA 235. For this game night, we’ll have lab members Eliana Freeman sharing her in-progress game project and Tom Kline sharing a conference presentation on the game Control. For our fun play portion, we’ll be playing Dragon Age: Veilguard together. Snacks and refreshments will be provided. Please share the flyer with your classes and networks, and let us know if you have any ideas for future game nights—we’re happy to feature work across media!

We will also be having a second game night on Tuesday, April 29 to coincide with the Spring Into Art event in the CFA: https://www.ubcfa.org/events-exhibitions/special-events/spring-into-art-2025.html

This second game night will be a celebration of student game development and game research projects this year, and will be open to any students who want to share. Get in touch with Cody if you want to show your game project at the event!

Please join us for the first Amatryx Game Night of 2025 on Thursday, March 13 at 6 PM in CFA 235! Amatryx Game Nights are open to all and consist of two parts: the first is someone sharing their in-progress work in games or other media for feedback, and the second is playing a popular game together for fun. This month we will have lab members Famous Clark and Dana Hunt-Locklear sharing their in-progress game projects, followed by a play session of Metaphor ReFantazio. No game experience required, snacks and refreshments will be provided. Reach out to Cody Mejeur if you have an idea for a future game night, or if you’d like to join the Amatryx lab (more info at https://ubwp.buffalo.edu/amatryx/).

And mark your calendars for our other game nights this semester: Thursday, April 17, and Tuesday, April 29 (coinciding with Spring Into Art in the CFA!).

We also wanted to share an update and celebration of Global Game Jam 2025, which we hosted with Buffalo Game Space, UB DMS and Center for the Arts, and UB Game Dev Club in January. Approximately 75 people attended the jam this year and made over 20 games! Thank you to everyone who organized, supported, and attended the event, and check back in the future for more game jam opportunities.

Please join us for Global Game Jam 2025, which we are again co-hosting with Buffalo Game Space, UB Game Dev Club, Department of Media Study, and Center for the Arts. GGJ will run at UB in the CFA atrium on January 24-26. Food will be provided for all meals as well as some snacks, equipment will be available through DMS for sound recruiting and asset creation in computer labs, and mentors from Buffalo Game Space and UB will be on hand to help with game projects. No experience is required! Even if you’re completely new to making games, you can come and join a team and learn some new skills (while likely making new connections and friends in the process!). Please see the flyer below for more details, as well as a QR code and link to the free registration.

Please share with anyone who might be interested!

And, as a bonus, learn more about Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio at the event! Here’s a screenshot from our last lab meeting of 2024, when we recapped our projects and activities for the year and played some games together.