In 2025, the ALT: GAMES festival debuted in Parramatta, Australia near Sydney, with the event being an initiative of Powerhouse Museum, which describes itself as the largest museum group in Australia. In its words, Powerhouse "sits at the intersection of the arts, design, science and technology and plays a critical role in engaging communities with contemporary ideas and issues".
ALT: GAMES returns on April 18-19, 2026 — there's still time to make travel plans! — and part of the event includes ALT: Play, which features 35 new and in-development video and board games from independent game makers across Australia and New Zealand. I've already featured Jason Tam's Cat Spotting in a March 2026 post and now I'm highlighting creators of the other analog games scheduled to be at this event:
▪️ Brothers Ando and Jono Cheung launched Quokka Games in 2021 with Carry On, a card-drafting game in which you want to stuff your luggage as full as possible without violating the weight limits.
The Cheungs have released seven games to date, with their two 2025 releases being Hot Pot, in which you take turns throwing ingredients in said pot, trying to time when to scoop out the right stuff, and Triple Gem, which is "a mindful journey into the heart of Buddhist teachings where players can choose to compete or collaborate and walk the middle way". Okay, I'll need to see rules for that.
▪️ Bluffoons is a party game in the works from Franco De Joya, with players each starting with 4-6 words in hand that they need to ditch in order to win.
To play, someone starts a story by saying a single word, the next player repeats what's been said before, then adds a new word, and so on. If you slip your word into the story without being challenged, you score that card, then the active player starts a new story. If you're challenged and have that card in hand, you ditch it and draw a new card, while the challenger discards one of their cards.
▪️ Samantha Zeng is demoing Shelf Control, which features a library filled with magical books and player librarians who will sabotage one another to take control of it.
▪️ In 2025, publisher Sanspants Radio crowdfunded Jarren's Outpost, a 2-5 player game from Jackson Baly, Adam Carnevale, Alex Wynnter, and Joel Zammit in which you control unique characters in a fantasy town who are trying to complete missions over seven days to end up with the most prestige. In one form or another, Jarren's Outpost will be present at ALT: Play.
▪️ Neapolitan is a 1-4 player co-operative, tile-laying game from Andrew Shellshear in which you deliver as much ice cream as possible to demanding customers, trying to max out your earnings.
▪️ Fiona McIntosh has released two items — U Shape Us and Up to Us — through her company U Shape Us that seemingly fall into the category of "designs called games that aren't actually games". Each title features person, place, thing, and invent prompts that players can use to create stories or connections with one another. McIntosh explains the origin of her creations in this blog post.
I've run across many designs along these lines over the years and keep meaning to assemble them into a single post of game-adjacent items. One day...
