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I am at Amaze Berlin 2026! And I am already seeing the crazy things that Amaze is known for

Skateboarding through the Internet and trying to stay balanced to pick up and deliver gifs

An amazing Jumanji-like game that greenscreens you to a tabletop group: MINE MIND The pieces move on their own, and you have to make decisions by picking cards that have NFC tags in them. It’s made by a team in Tokyo. It’s a really cool and scary experience, especially if you lose. Which I did.

It rained a lot this morning, but the weather improved a lot, so the opening speech can be held outside!

Amaze is officially open!

“Please ‘clap’ for each sponsor”, and so folks did exactly that

And of course: Live action music accompanying a live played experimental game

This is the 15th year of Amaze, so they installed a scroll down memory lane with pictures. Here are some very young faces of @ramiismail.com, @lucyamorris.bsky.social, @sosowski.bsky.social, @keano.bsky.social, and @jwaaaap.com

In the evening: A bodybuilding card deck game

Thank you to everyone who visited my tool design workshop! Go build the awesome daily workflows we all need for a better day at work!

There are ‘open screens’ that folks were able to sign up for and showcase at Amaze. I played Lucky Punk by @brendengibbons.bsky.social and I like how it brings the statistics of failure percentages down to very quick gameplay. Like the 99% hit rate in Xcom, all the time, gambling your life on it.

There is going to be a game about waiting in line, which is such a great Amaze thing

I have seen conferences try to be fully online, and it doesn’t quite work as well. Or partially online, partially IRL, which also doesn’t work well. But here is a talk at Amaze bringing in @rasheedabueideh.bsky.social digitally while the crowd is here IRL, asking questions, and it works very well.

Of course getting in speakers IRL is best, but in this case those who cannot or do not want to travel can still be present in front of many folks, and those folks can still discuss what they saw later, sitting in the grass outside. I haven’t seen this done before, and I wish conferences did.

Sadly Jenny Jiao Hsia is not able to make their talk, so instead here is a very brave @eestew.bsky.social doing a repeat of their lighting talk from last year, on the spot!

Just played a game, Lucky Castaway, about a cruise traveller duck who is addicted to gambling and has to survive when stranded on an island, together with a talking slot machine. I like how, now matter how long humanity has existed, we always find a new combination story to tell.

Now seeing a talk about houses dating, and poledancing as a house, by @tanatb.housefuckinggame.com

Next, @fawzi.zone talking about his history in game development, such as working on My Little Pony, Ice Age, Minions, and Spider Man games, and so much more! An incredible huge career all over the world.

And now there is a date with Pierce Brosnan and a… French clown maid?

Time for the Amaze award show! Starting off with a godly gizmo on the ceiling?

We’re learning a lot about cooking

Here would be a picture of us all hanging out outside of Panke, but just imagine everyone being chill, drinking, and talking. And eating a stroopwafel now and then.

I played so many more games and had many great conversations. Amaze is, after 15 years, still a great way to see the truly weird hardware and software out there. Great to see it still alive and well after all this time.