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.

Please join us for the final Amatryx Game Night of 2024 on Tuesday, December 10 at 6 PM in CFA 235. This game night is entirely dedicated to playtesting student game projects for finals, so if you or your friends or students have games that could use playtesting, bring them to game night!

Donuts will be provided!

We’ll also be doing a long-needed update of the website over the break, stay posted for more details.

Please join us for another Amatryx game night on Tuesday, November 19 from 6-8 PM in CFA 235! This month we’ll be playing Trans Folks Walking, one of Amatryx’s lab game dev projects, together, followed by some retro games in an arcade cabinet! Refreshments and snacks provided.

Please share with anyone who might be interested, and thank you to Famous for the flyer!

Attached please find two Amatryx flyers: the first for our game night on Tuesday, October 29 featuring a new board game by lab member Max Wilde, followed by play time of student game projects and the recently released Silent Hill 2 remake. This game night coincides with the Art in the Open event, and will be one small part of the festivities that night in the Center for the Arts at UB. Come check out our games, enjoy some cookies, and see Art in the Open, all in a convenient one stop shop evening!

The second flyer is a recruitment flyer for the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio. In the past year we’ve had wonderful lab members graduate and move on to other jobs and projects, and the lab is open and accepting new undergraduate, graduate, and faculty members! Now is a great time to get involved with the lab as we begin work on a couple new projects, including pulling together our next grant project, Gaming in the Rust Belt, focused on game stories, communities, and development in the Rust Belt region.

Please share the flyers with anyone who might be interested. Thanks to Famous and Dana for the flyers!

Please see the attached flyer (and share with your classes/friends/students!) for the first Amatryx game night of the semester, happening on Tuesday, September 24 in CFA 235 from 6-8 PM. For this first game night, we’ll be featuring games by lab members Joan Nobile and Famous Clark, followed by some just-for-fun play time of Age of Mythology Retold, a spinoff of the classic Age of Empires games. We’ll also have a brief QA session about Amatryx’s work, current projects, and how to join for those interested—we are welcoming new members!

Each month Amatryx hosts a game night with the first half dedicated to constructive feedback on creative projects (including but not limited to games—we’ve featured poetry, electronic literature, short films, and more!) and the second half dedicated to playing a game together for fun. Lab members get priority for sharing their creative projects at game nights, but we also welcome folks outside of the lab or games courses to share their work too—just let us know, and we can work you into the schedule! Snacks and refreshments provided at each game night.

Check out our About page for more info about Amatryx!

Future game nights (details and flyers to follow!):

October 29, 6-8 PM in CFA 286

November 19, 6-8 PM in CFA 235

December 3, 6-8 PM in CFA 235

The Amatryx Lab is really excited to share an episode of Gayming Podcast, the podcast for Gayming Magazine, that Cody got to be a part of! This episode celebrates 35 years since CM Ralph published Caper in the Castro, a foundational queer game released as “charityware” during the AIDS crisis. Huge thanks to Robin and Miabyte for hosting Cody, and to Adrienne Shaw who recommended them for it!

This summer the Amatryx Lab is working on finishing and publishing Trans Folks Walking, our game that has been in development, and on laying the groundwork for our next big project: Gaming in the Rust Belt, focused on game design, gaming cultures, and regional history in the Rust Belt region. We will be conducting reading and playing groups this summer, and let us know if you’d like to get involved in some way!

Please join us for an Amatryx game night on Tuesday, 4/9, from 6-8 PM in CFA 286. This game night will feature feedback and discussion of Tansy Xiao’s VR work—Tansy is an artist in residence in Buffalo right now, and was also part of the Creativity in the Time of Covid-19 exhibition last August. After the feedback session we will be playing Detroit: Become Human together as part of ongoing discussions of the lab’s next project that we’re calling Gaming in the Rust Belt, focusing on game content, culture, and production in Rust Belt settings, including Buffalo.

Please join us for the next Amatryx game night on Tuesday, March 12 at 6 PM in CFA 286, featuring in-progress work by Madison Ford (please see attached flyer). After the presentation and discussion, we’ll be playing Mario Party and Mario Kart games on the Nintendo Switch together. 

With apologies for the very short notice, the first Amatryx Game Night is tomorrow, Feb. 27 at 6 PM in CFA 286. This game night will feature a short info session about the Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio—what it is, what our projects in game design and game studies are, and how people can join and get involved. Then we will play games made at Global Game Jam 2024, followed by playing Smite (a multiplayer arena battle game) together. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided.

Please also mark your calendars for the March game night on March 12 at 6 PM in CFA 286, featuring Mario Kart and Mario Party games. Our final game night will be April 9 at 6 PM in CFA 286. Each of our game nights also includes time for someone to share a game or other media project for feedback and discussion—if you have any work you’d like to get friendly and constructive feedback or playtesting for, please reach out to an Amatryx lab member!

Thanks to everyone who attended and supported Global Game Jam 2024’s site at UB, co-hosted by Buffalo Game Space, Amatryx, Department of Media Study, UB Game Dev Club, and the UB Center for the Arts! With generous support provided by UB Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Dunkin Donuts, and the Mellon Foundation.

This was the first Global Game Jam held in Buffalo since 2018, and we were thrilled with the turnout: over 80 people attended, and 23 games were made. The games varied widely in addressing the GGJ 2024 theme of “Make Me Laugh,” from platformers to dating sims to comic card games to a ninja tickle simulator, and it was great to see what people made over the 3 days of the jam. Congratulations to everyone who completed a game, especially for first-time jammers!

We’ll be back to host GGJ 2025, and in the mean time will continue to have a variety of great events, programming, and jams with Buffalo Game Space. The first Amatryx game night of 2024 will take place on Tuesday, February 27 at 6 PM in CFA 286, featuring the GGJ games. Stay tuned for more!