Esports Festival 2026

The GDSG convention spree continues: this time, the Esports Festival in Vienna (11th to 12th of July)!

One weekend full of showcasing Kitty Pong, trying out other games, keeping children away from destroying our Arcade Machine, admiring cosplays, connecting with fellow (student) game devs, eating churros and also trying out a Dead by Daylight Escape Room!

We are happy to say that lot of people enjoyed Kitty Pong and got some positive feedback for it!

Besides Kitty Pong, some of our students brought their separate project from the GrazMinster GameJam Qwick, which also received quite positive reviews!

We hope to be there next year as well and are thankful to be once again a part of so many conventions!

July 2026

GrazMinster GameJam 2026

GDSG went internationally once again! This time, students from TU Graz and the University of Westminster collaborated on a GameJam.
But what even is a GameJam (or “Hackathon”)?
It’s a challenge, where one or several people try to create a game in a very short amount of time with either a theme of their choice or an already given theme. This is a great chance to learn new game engines, try out different areas that belong to game development and explore different game mechanics and topics.

But the students from Westminster were not only in Graz to work with us together on new games, we also spent long evenings playing board games together, discovering local bars and admiring the city of Graz.
And Pizza. There was lots of Pizza. And beer. Beer and Pizza, hell yes! (Also alcohol-free and sodas 🙂

The GameJam itself lasted 3 days, where 5 teams created individual video games on the topic “When the lights go out” – as you can guess, there were some horror games, but not solely! If you want to play the games yourself, see what each group created within this very short time:

• Group 1: Qwick
  “Escape from an old house as a candle creature trying to keep your flame alive.”
  A 2D-pixelart platformer; Godot
• Group 2: Haunted Misery
  “You are a teenager who is currently on the summer vacation with friends in the woods. Suddenly, you wake up on the next day in a haunted mansion.”
  A top-down horror game; Godot
• Group 3: Wolf shaft von Graz
  “Escape the mines, repair the broken lamps and don’t get caught by the wolf.”
  A 3D-horror game; Unity
• Group 4: After Hours
  “After Hours is a first-person horror game in which a kid is left by his parents in a toy store that has since been shut down, making it a dark and terrifying scene for him.”
  A 3D-horror game; Unity
• Group 5: Between The Wall
  “You are trapped in the backrooms, a maze of unknowable corridors deep underground.”
  A top-down horror-game; Unity

We all had so much fun and are more than happy to do something similar in the future again!

June, 2026

La Strada 2026

Our student team recently had the incredible opportunity to playtest an innovative new game, and we are so excited to share a bit about our experience! Imagine an “IRL RPG” that transforms the city into both your stage and your game board. Controlled through a mobile app, players navigate a digital map overlaid onto actual city locations.

For us, the adventure kicked off right in front of Uni Graz, and depending on our choices, the story branched out across different locations in the city! Our 3-day playtesting journey looked like this:
Day 1: First playtest and initial feedback discussion.
Day 2: A deep-dive session exploring the creators’ vision, what worked well, and brainstorming key improvements.
Day 3: Back to the streets for a second playtest to see our feedback and the new improvements live in action!

We are incredibly grateful to have been a part of this process and to help shape such an immersive urban performance. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for this project! Want to learn more? Check out the details here: https://www.in-situ.info/marcos-krivocapich.

Big thanks to La Strada for both hosting this amazing event and inviting us to it!

May, 2026

button festival 2026

For this year’s button festival (an event for the local gaming and nerd culture), taking place on the 6th and 7th of March, we were an additional force for the Game Dev Graz and helping out with the SAGA (StyriAn Game Award).

This Award promotes the development and consumption of local (styrian) made games with this year contestants being:

• Pale Coins (Lukas Irzl)
• Roguefall (Velwoot Games)
• Space Cowboy (ILIKESCIFI Games)
• Weblab (Causa Creations)
• Toni’s Turbo Tunnel (Anton Klinger)

We congratulate the winner Roguefall and are excited to be a helping hand again for button festival 2027!

March, 2026

Wii Sportsathlon 2025

Another year, another Wii Sportsathlon!
Last year it was Wii Bowling, this year we overshadowed Dominic Thiem with our skills in Wii Tennis.

6 Teams with two players each battled fiercly against each other, playing with intense power and such high concentration, giving everything to win and proving themselves as the ultimate masters.

The 3 best teams would win Wii Joycons, on top of being the undisputed champions of this nerve-wrecking and most exciting tournament.

We congratulate all of you for those great matches, and see you next year for some more olympic-worthy performances!

December 2025