Moss Island 

Iris is a game creator and technical artist with special enthusiasm for forests and nature environments. In 2021 she released the horror-action-adventure indie game ‘Dap’ together with her husband Paul Anstey. The game indulges in lush pixel art vegetation and taught her game development art and code. Since then she studied Game Design at RMIT and made small games on her own as well as in teams such as ‘Florrae’, which allows players to explore a stylised nature in a generative world. She enjoys making unconventional games in beautiful environments, while combining art and tech to make things visually pleasing and creating engrossing atmospheres.

Beyond the Lens

Ben Koder is a game developer with a passion for weird technologies. He is currently completing his final year of studies in Game Design at RMIT University, where he also works on research and development of VR and AR educational software. Koder’s work explores novel applications of human-computer interfaces to promote critical thinking about these technologies in our daily lives. His project, Beyond The Lens, challenges conventions surrounding generative AI in games. Koder is committed to creating impactful work that breaks new ground in the industry, whether it be games, research, or education.

Bell’s Beach

Ground Bird is a plucky group of creatives from Melbourne. Forged in the flames of lockdown six, they’re creating games about trains in space, fish in fryers and eldritch university bureaucrats on a mission to expose the absurdity of everyday life and put cultural cringe in the ground. 

Bell’s Beach is a silly exploration platformer where fishing is taken to its ILLOGICAL extreme. Run and jump around a vibrant coastal town, chatting with eccentric locals, and search for fishing spots that only a keen eye and a slightly mad mind will be able to discover.

Janet DeMornay Is A Slumlord (and a Witch)

Fuzzy Ghost is Pete Foley and Scott Ford. Together they develop narrative-driven games that are bold, colourful, joyful, very Australian, and very queer. 

Their first two games, Pebble Witch and Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg were Australian Game Developer Award (AGDA) nominated for Excellence in Emerging Games. Queer Man Peering won the award in 2022. It was also nominated for the IGF Nuovo Award at GDC. 

Their next game, Janet DeMornay Is A Slumlord (and a witch) explores the anxieties and horrors of what it is to be a renter in a world run by landlords… and your landlord is a witch.

Video Shop Algorithm 

Jessie Scott is an independent video artist, writer and programmer working in Narrm (Melbourne). She is a founding member of audiovisual art collective Tape Projects, and co-directed and founded the inaugural Channels Video Art Festival in 2013. In July 2023 she premiered her feature length film Rainbow Video at Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Both Video Shop Algorithm and Rainbow Video are major outcomes of her PhD entitled Forgotten but not gone: A video art project examining video library culture as a creative tool, which she is currently completing at RMIT University while raising two children.

Mystiques: Haunted Antiques

Ally McLean Hennessy is a game developer from Sydney, Australia. Ally was the Gamerunner of “RUMU”, a narrative adventure about a sentient robot vacuum cleaner who only knows how to love. RUMU was the winner of an Australian Writer’s Guild Award and an AGDA. Ally is now the Writer and Director of Mystiques, a haunted antiquing game.