Sep 18–21, 2024

2020 Game Devs of Color Expo

1500+ attendees gathered to celebrate game creators of color.

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Get a quick look at our 2-day online event.

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2020 games list

'Ye or Nay?

A.M. Darke feat. Tajae Keith, Nick Yonge, and Seren Sensei

'Ye or Nay? is a satirical take on the classic game Guess Who?, where all of the characters are Black men, and half of them are Kanye West. Eschewing the binarized identities of its predecessor, 'Ye or Nay? allows us to examine the language we use to describe and differentiate Black men: What does “brown skin” mean when all of the subjects are brown?

1000 Deaths

Pariah Interactive

1000 Deaths is a third-person, 3D adventure platformer about confronting your interpersonal conflicts and the effects of TV and media on the human psyche. Play through several short and fast-paced episodes to discover wildly different endings with each playthrough. Switch between perspectives from a pool of eclectic characters, making difficult decisions that you’ll take with you to the grave.

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield

Aerial_Knight (Neil Jones)

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is a 3D side-scroller that plays much like a classic endless runner. The game has an interesting story which keeps players always in motion. Run, Jump, Slide or "Dash" for acrobatic variants leading to dope combinations and avoid the challenges that await. Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is being built for players who love to speedrun games while being an experience that casual players will enjoy as well.

after HOURS

Bahiyya Khan, Claire Meekel, Abi Meekel, Tim Flusk

The IGF winning game, after HOURS, is a vignette, FMV, that allows players a glimpse into the life of Lilith Gray – a young woman who was molested as a child and suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder as a result. By spending a night alone with Lilith in her bedroom and subsequently, her head, players learn Lilith's story by adopting a double gaze: that of the player witnessing Lilith's story and piecing together why she behaves and responds as she does and to an extent, the gaze of Lilith herself.

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs

Strange Scaffold

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs is a first-person open-world comedy adventure game with a very long name. You and your fiancée are the last two human beings left in the universe. Dogs run airports, along with the rest of society. Deal with alien logic, travel issues, and strange stock photo dogs as you attempt to stay in touch with the person you love, when you both live your lives on the go!

Breakpoint

Studio Aesthesia

Breakpoint is a twin-stick slasher where your weapons explode. Break through the swarm to claim your spot on the online leaderboard.

In a twist on the twin-stick formula, you have no ranged attack. Instead, slice, crush, and blast your way through the swarm. Push your weapons to their breakpoint to unleash a devastating explosion on your enemies. Break, charge, and break your weapons again as you fight to stay alive.

DON'T GIVE UP

Taco Pizza Cat Games

DON’T GIVE UP is a comedic RPG about a mentally ill game dev trying to find success in life who becomes wrapped up in the manifestations of his own inner demons. You'll delve into your subconscious in order to face darkness and an evil entity intent on unraveling your mind, all while fending off pizza bullies, social anxiety, and male pattern baldness!

Disclaimer: DON'T GIVE UP has themes of mental illness and is a LIGHT RPG adventure.

Duster

Coldrice Games

Experience the life of a vaquero making the dangerous journey to the west. When a miner is murdered his spirit seeks to enact revenge. Every encounter along the way presents a unique challenge with multiple solutions. What will you do if an outlaw camp is in your path? Carefully sneak around, go in guns blazing, or lure a wild bear straight into their midst? Choose a Wild West career, load up on supplies, and journey through a randomly generated west filled with glory and hilarious death

Finders, Keepers

Alex Francois

A hike above ancient woodland on summer solstice; the longest day of the year.

Finders, Keepers tells a tale through unconventional means; tips left by users of a dating app that hint at a tragic tale, strange profiles leading to hidden clues, landmarks evoking a mysterious history. A dreamlike atmosphere permeates through simple, joyful interactions, while the narrative evokes a range of emotions, from humorous dating profiles, to unsettling discoveries.

Garden Story

Picogram

Unify a broken community as the newly-appointed Guardian of The Grove. Traverse a vibrant island to combat invasive Rot, inspire its inhabitants, and rebuild your home. You won't have to do this alone: fruity friends await, ready to lend a hand!

Publisher: Rose City Games  ||  Developer: Picogram

Jumpala

Yokereba Games

Jumpala is a fast-paced competitive puzzle/fighting game hybrid that's all about sabotage, special moves, and stage control. While the core mechanics are simple, each game is a test of skill and strategy as you try to outscore and outplay your opponents. Play with up to 4 players locally, or compete with others online.

Keylocker | Turn Based Cyberpunk Action

Moonana

In a silent cyberpunk world where music has been prohibited, B0B0 will serenade her rebellion against the vicious authorities by banding together with the Jukebot drummer, Rocket, to shatter the strings of fate and sing the melody of freedom in this unforgiving Rhythm Turn Based JRPG.

KindFolx

Taco Pizza Cat Games

Play as Reinus, a once young monsterfolk who had dreams of joining the Monster King's army, only to be rejected because his "goofy face". After 10 years of training, he's returned to crush the entire army on his own as the ultimate act of spite. Fight your way through the heart of KindFolx in real time PvE card game dungeon crawler!

Koshka's Kofe

Jamine Jupiter, Michelle Ma, Cloud Tian

After inheriting her estranged father’s coffee shop following his death, Catarina Koshka returns to her hometown to try to find closure. In this somber but heartwarming visual novel, players will make coffee, meet cute animal characters, and navigate the encroaching advances of a predatory corporation bent on buying out your neighborhood shop.

LIONKILLER

Sisi Jiang

LIONKILLER is a choose-your-own-adventure game made in Twine. Play as Hua Mulan, who is conscripted into the First Opium War against the British Empire. Run a flower shop, kiss a girl, shoot a matchlock rifle, and uncover a military conspiracy! Your actions will lead you to one out of four different endings. Will you get the girl, or will you die an inglorious death?

Love Shore

Perfect Garbage

Set in the cyberpunk city of Love Shore, two cyborgs are pulled into the secret underground world of crime run by hidden gods. Play as Sam or Farah as you attempt to navigate the city, solve the mysteries that plague you, about the city and your existence and team up with an unlikely companion. Who knows, you might just fall in love....

Lucifer Within Us

Kitfox Games

In Lucifer Within Us, you are a digital exorcist, seeing beyond this reality into alternate timelines of the accused. Solve murders, purify the possessed, and purge their daemons in this non-linear mystery.

Use all of the tools at your disposal to find the truth, wherever it may hide… and beware the lies you tell yourself.

Museum Multiverse VR

Made in Brooklyn Games

The Webby-nominated Museum Multiverse is a virtual reality platformer. This perspective-changing experience chronicles JR's adventures, a kid who has mysteriously awoken in an abandoned museum. He must traverse the various worlds within the art pieces within the depths of the cursed museum to find a way to escape.
Each painting JR enters into changes the experience. Take JR through 3rd person platforming to 1st person exploration in an adventure built entirely for VR.

Mystic Pillars: A Story-Based Puzzle Game

Holy Cow Productions

Mystic Pillars is a game based in the southern part of Ancient India with 100 simple and unique logical puzzles. Play as a mysterious traveller whose journey across the world lands you in the kingdom of Zampi. Resolve the drought plaguing the once-prosperous kingdom of Zampi by solving puzzles and destroying the magical pillars blocking the water. Over the course of your journey, you meet other characters and slowly uncover what exactly happened that led to the downfall of Zampi.

OneBit Adventure

Galactic Slice LLC

OneBit Adventure is a free-to-play retro roguelike where you choose a class, fight strong monsters, and level up as you try to survive your adventure. The further you go, the stronger the enemies get as you try your best to survive. Each class has a weakness in which you must learn to adapt in order to survive the longest in this epic pixel art game!

Onsen Master

Waking Oni Games

Onsen Master is a hot spring customer management game where players must revitalize various hot springs across the fantasy island of Izajima! Create ingredients to match the various customer ailments, reconnect the communities that surround each onsen, and discover the supernatural world that they've long since been disconnected from.

ProtoCorgi

Mario

Retro style pixel art, horizontal shoot ‘em up with arcade gameplay that gives the player control over Bullet, a C3 class (Cosmic Combat Corgi) cybernetic pup.

When Bullet discovers that Nixie was kidnapped by evil alien forces seeking galactic domination, the cute, yet deadly Corgi goes on a quest to save her. The adventure ahead fills your screen with fully animated beautiful retro pixel art and lets you experience Bullet’s fights with precise controls, solid gameplay and passionate story.

She Dreams Elsewhere

Studio Zevere

SHE DREAMS ELSEWHERE is a surreal adventure RPG about dreams and the extent to which they mirror reality. You play as Thalia, an anxiety-ridden, comatose woman on a journey to defeat the nightmares preventing her from awakening, while also finding out how exactly this mess happened in the first place. But some nightmares are harder to confront than others…

Skate Story

Sam Eng

Skate Story is an abstract skateboarding game set in the underworld. Carve through otherworldly architecture and kickflip over a forgotten god's marble head. Befriend lost souls and the spirit residents of the afterlife. Make your way through the nine layers of purgatory and get to the center of it all.

Solace State

Vivid Foundry

Solace State is a choice-driven sci-fi drama game about youth hackers in a militarized biotech society, where acts of resistance shape friends and factions fighting for their livelihoods. With 'social hacking', investigate and earn the people's hearts, and change the course of the society in which everyone hopes to build a future. Traverse through a narrative landscape in which the text is embedded into the 3D environment, teeming with lore and characters from all walks of life.

ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area

Veritable Joy

ValiDate is a visual novel in which you get to experience what it means to exist as an adult in your twenties. A dating sim? Something like that. You’ll get a better glimpse when you actually play the game.
Set in the Jercy City area, twelve adults in their twenties attempt to overcome the harsh realities of capitalism and the daily work that wears them down. Includes a hint of love, cosplay, and even some shitty mixtapes in the mix.

Xenosis: Alien Infection

NerdRage Studios

You are a deep space salvage hunter who discovers the remains of the Starship Carpathian, thought to have been destroyed on a deep space mission nearly 50 years ago.

You’ve hit the jackpot. The data core housed in the ship’s AI will be worth a lifetime of credits on the Black Market, so you dock with the ship to retrieve it. The ship appears to be empty. There are no detectable life signs, and besides, surely nothing could still be alive after so many years?

Yellowface - An Asian American Story

Mike Ren Yi

"Yellowface - An Asian American Story" is an interactive story inspired by the works of playwright David Henry Hwang. At a house party in America, you are confronted by other partygoers to your racial identity. Will you answer casually, trying to pass as white? Or will you tell the truth and appear more asian? Answer impossible questions about race, question your own identity, and try to survive an awkward night out.

Design Eye | The Graphic Design Education Game

Deon Mixon

DESIGN EYE™ is the world’s first graphic design education board game. A creative game for people with great ideas! You are a student competing for acceptance into a prestigious design school called The Haas and must build a strong portfolio to show for an interview. Learn about the major disciplines and fundamentals of graphic design. Sketch your own ideas and present them to your opponents for critique or speed test your design knowledge via flash cards. Doing both earns you points to gain Portfolio Cards (cards that represent each work in your portfolio). The first to finish their portfolio wins!

Dogs BOND

Alex Lu, Kiera Purrazzella, Sarah Mills


Players take on the role of a rescue shelter dog, collecting and sometimes competing for the attributes needed to be adopted into one of six forever homes.

We infuse the rescue journey with play, whimsy, and hope. The game entertains and makes a "pawsitive" change to the rescue conversation.  

Gladius

Cat Quartet Games

In Gladius, play as cunning Roman spectators trying to make the most money by betting on rigging the gladiatorial games. Each round, players secretly place bets on competing gladiator teams. Through the skillful use of underhanded tactics, players can help and hinder teams to alter the outcome of each battle. The player with the most money at the end of three rounds wins! Will you walk away with toga pockets brimming full of gold, or will you be left without a single denarius to your name?

Hoop Godz

Board Game Brothas

Hoop Godz is a 2-player head-to-head street basketball board game. Each player picks 3 ballers from the lineup and the action on the court begins! On your turn, you spend your team's energy ("Juice) to move your players and use your skills on the court. Play action cards and then roll dice as fast as you can to match the action card icons and determine who comes out on top. First team to score 7 points wins!

Inequality-opoly: The Board Game of Structural Racism and Sexism in America

Perry Clemons

Inequality-opoly: The Board Game of Structural Racism and Sexism in America is an educational property trading game that transforms recent national studies into a perspective-taking experience showing how racism and sexism affect the accumulation and sustaining of wealth.

MonsDRAWsity

Eric Slauson

As a paranormal investigator, it's your job to create a forensic sketch of a recently witnessed creature, alien, demon, or trans-dimensional entity. You will make your drawing based on your witness's description, but be careful... they didn't get a good look, and it's up to you to fill in the blanks! Filled with awesome monsters designed by today's top artists, MonsDRAWsity is a party drawing game for fans of creatures of all types!

Tattoo Stories

Eric Slauson

A hilarious party game of designing tattoos. Everyone takes a turn to be the customer by selecting cards to inspire their tattoo. The other players (tattoo artists) design and draw a tattoo they feel best represents the cards selected, then pitch their idea to the customer. Tattoos are awarded points based on the creativity of the design, not the quality of the drawing. Good ink or bad ink, the art is in how you sell it! Available on Target.com, Amazon,  Bicyclecards.com, and your friendly local game store!

The Girl and the Robot - The Card Game

Flying Carpets Games

Take on the role of the girl and the robot as you battle the evil queen in this strategic card game inspired by concepts from Russian roulette and classic shedding card games.

Plan strategies with your ally, deceive your opponents and play cards at key moments to avoid death by the demon.

Winsults

Davon Ford, Lanee Higgins

Winsults is the dangerously fun insult party game that tests your knowledge and your relationships.

Show all 36 games

2020 speaker list

Sheila Moore

I'm Sheila Moore, but I mostly go by Sharpie online! I've worked as an influencer, community manager, and social media consultant for multiple independent game developement companies most notably Lab Zero Games on both Skullgirls and Indivisible. I am also an avid and very active member of the fighting game community as well as 1/3 of the co-founders of Combo Queens, an organization in the fighting game community dedicated to helping people who identify as female feel more comfortable.

Johnny Liu

Johnny Liu has been in the industry for 8 years and has worked in QA, Community Management, and Product Management. He is currently the Product Manager at Standing Stone Games working on Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Victoria Tran

Victoria Tran is the Communications Director at Kitfox Games, an indie studio in Montreal, Canada creating intriguing worlds like 'Boyfriend Dungeon' and 'Lucifer Within Us'. Additionally, they are publishing 'Dwarf Fortress' and 'Mondo Museum' to Steam. When she is not exploring ways to create kinder game community spaces, she also does community consultations and co-organizes Game and Colour, a group for devs of colour in Montreal.

Chase Bethea

Chase Bethea is a freelance Composer that has shipped 18 titles in his nine years experience. He has scored games such as I Can’t Escape Darkness, Aground, and Potions Please. He continues to compose a diverse collection of music that are a fusion of texture and complexity allowing the player to become immersed in the experience. His soundtrack for “Cubic Climber” earned a Noteworthy on Destructoid. In 2016, Chase was nominated for Artists of the Year – Independent Composer by VGMO.

Calbert Warner

Calbert Warner is a NYC based audio architect that has a passion for creating video game music. With his signature blend of orchestral and electronic elements, Calbert continues to bring life to a wide variety of multimedia projects. When he is not composing, you can find him capturing life in the streets of NYC with his Sony A7iii.

Salman Shurie

An Independent developer,  started developing and jamming out games in 1-3 days in addition to prototyping weird ideas handling much if not all aspects of development of all his games . He got his first start in the industry by landing work at a hyper-casual game studio (Madbox) using ski and later deciding to persue going independent to have the freedom to make whatever weird projects like BBBlaster about dogs that control spaceships like its a toy or golf with boxing gloves.

Shana T Bryant

"Producer and 17-year industry veteran, Shana T Bryant has had a hand in crafting some of your favorite videogames. From Devil May Crys to Outer Worlds to HoloLens, Shana has developed profound experiences, spanning generations of platforms, genres, & media.

Shana is a published author & speaker, an avid comic artist & inclusive design geek. Shana volunteers on the IGDA’s Women in Games steering committee and Black in Gaming.

For more, join her on Twitter: @mushrooQueendom and @terribleallies"

Claude Jerome

"Claude is a game designer with a focus and passion for building intrinsically satisfying and memorable action game experiences.

With a decade of experience working on AAA franchises like Skylanders and Destiny, Claude has built expertise developing thrilling and expressive gameplay mechanics for millions of players worldwide.

Claude aims to broaden our industry's taxonomy of game feel and further our understanding of driving player empathy and social connection through mechanics and systems."

Charles McGregor

Charles McGregor is an award-winning game developer, musician, and artist. Charles founded Tribe Games; an independent video game studio based in Minnesota. He created and designed HyperDot, which has won various awards including Tom’s Guide’s Best of E3 2019. He has worked on various projects for a wide variety of platforms, including the Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens, PC, Mobile, and Consoles. Charles is currently the sole developer at his studio Tribe Games.

Sharang Biswas

Sharang Biswas has won IndieCade & IGDN awards for game design, and has showcased interactive works at institutions such as The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. His writing has appeared in Eurogamer, Unwinnable, & First Person Scholar, among other publications. He recently co-edited Honey & Hot Wax: An Anthology of Erotic Art Games (Pelgrane Press). He teaches at Fordham and Bard.

Jonaya Kemper

Jonaya Kemper’s interdisciplinary work looks at games as an emancipatory tool. The originator of the term "emancipatory bleed", she has spoken and led workshops internationally on her methods. Contributing work across the field, she was a Lead Developer for John Wick Presents’ 7th Seas: Lands of Gold and Fire, and has consulted for Remedy Entertainment, and Participation Design Agency. Selected writing: Honey and Hot Wax: An Erotic Anthology, Midwinter, and Kids on Bikes: Strange Adventures.

Rachel Li

Rachel Li is a game designer and new media artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Always curious about how and why things work the way they do, she constantly seeks exciting ways to question boundaries and finds new forms of creative expression. Her work ranges from digital and analog games to VR/AR experiences, from interactive installations to alternative controllers. Outside of work, she grows green onions and reads about mythical creatures.   

Clio Yun-su Davis

Clio Yun-su Davis is a game designer and writer whose work largely focuses on grief, Asian and Asian American experiences, pop culture, gender, and adolescence. They have contributed to tabletop roleplaying games such as Kids on Bikes and Mutants & Masterminds and are the lead designer for the card game Battle of the Boybands. Clio also creates LARPs and interactive fiction. Their interactive novel The Fog Knows Your Name was published by Choice of Games in 2019.

Naomi Clark

Naomi Clark is an independent game designer and faculty at the NYU Game Center, where she teaches classes on game design, roleplaying, and player research. She's been making games for over two decades, contributing to nearly three dozen published titles. Only one of those is (centrally) about sex: Consentacle, a card game of trust, intimacy and communication. She's also the co-author of Game Design Vocubulary with Anna Anthropy, and a long-time collective member at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

John R. Diaz

John is a 1st gen American from Spanish Harlem NYC with roots from the Dominican Republic. He got his Bachelors in Game Development from Full Sail University in 2006. Since than he’s done Game Design on Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and at various studios across the continent including Midway Austin, Rockstar San Diego, & WB Games Montreal. Now he builds video tutorials in Seattle, WA for the Amazon Lumberyard Game Engine at youtube.com/AmazonLumberyardTutorials.

Ana Diaz

Ana is a writer and reporter covering video games and internet culture. She started her career in games media at Twin Cities Geek and then worked her way towards a position as an editorial intern at Polygon. These days, she is a host at MinnMax and supreme shit poster at the independent games label, GLITCH.

Shannon Liao

Shannon Liao is an associate writer at CNN Business covering video games. Prior to joining CNN, Liao was a tech and culture reporter at The Verge covering general tech news, Chinese internet culture, cryptocurrency, smart homes, and the intersection between internet culture, gaming and politics. She was also on Vox Media's board for the Asian American employee resource group.

Imran Khan

Imran is a freelance video game journalist and cohost for the Patreon-based Kinda Funny Games. As former senior editor at Game Informer and throughout his career, Imran has fought for diversity and inclusion within the games industry and within the games themselves.

Gita Jackson

Award Winning writer and editor with 5+ years' experience that has written for MTV News, GQ, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine, writing articles that ask their readers to think about the internet and new media entertainment as holistic parts of their lives.

Ethan Redd

Ethan Redd is a multimedia designer/artist, consultant, and founder of the Virtuoso Neomedia. Redd boasts a signature style sporting bold colors, sharp silhouette, and lively, life-affirming charm. A self-taught jack-of-all trades and one man juggernaut, Redd believes in the power of art and media to inspire individuals to reach higher and push further in their own lives. His current
projects are Zodiac XX, Blazing Legion: Ignition, and Killer Auto.

Lisette Titre-Montgomery

Lisette Titre-Montgomery is an Art Director with 20 years of game development experience. She has contributed to some of the highest profile games: Tiger Woods Golf, The Simpsons, Dante’s Inferno, Dance Central 3, SIMS 4, South Park, and more. Her current project is Psychonauts 2 with Double Fine Productions. She is also an instructor and board member of Gameheadsoakland.org, a Game Development Accelerator program for Oakland youth.

Xalavier Nelson Jr.

Xalavier Nelson Jr. is an award-winning narrative director and writer who has held leading roles on titles including Hypnospace Outlaw, Can Androids Pray, SkateBIRD, We Are The Caretakers, and dozens of other titles. His current project is an absurdist first-person open world comedy adventure game called An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, for a variety of reasons that he finds very difficult to explain to his parents.

Evva Karr

Evva Karr is a creative director working at the intersection of game design and business. As the founder and final boss at GLITCH, they’re focused on creating a global collective of bold new voices and investing in the future of playable media. Before launching their own company, they spent time designing systems and working on publishing initiatives for companies such as Activision Blizzard Media and Riot Games.

Sisi Jiang (they/them)

Sisi (they/them) is a narrative designer, a writer, and their own worst critic. They have shipped critically acclaimed narrative games such as LIONKILLER and Signs of the Sojourner. They are also an occasional games journalist. Their favorite drink flavor is passion fruit.

Limpho Moeti

Limpho Moeti previously worked at Free Lives (Broforce, Gorn) and was deputy festival director of South Africa's playful media festival, Playtopia. Currently she works as a producer/biz dev at Nyamakop developing on African-inspired video games. In her spare time she thinks of ways to smash the patriarchy, topple capitalism and who was the best Batman. She is definitely not a robot sent from the future to destroy human but her boss did call her the nuclear bomb of bizdev.

Show all 32 speakers

2020 game dev grant winners

This year, we upped the grant pool to $90,000 and gave five teams money to make innovative games.

Humble Bundle Game Creator of Color Award

Salman Shurie

Salman Shurie - an Independent developer,  started developing and jamming out games in 1-3 days in addition to prototyping weird ideas handling much if not all aspects of development of all his games . He got his first start in the industry by landing work at a hyper-casual game studio (Madbox) using ski and later deciding to persue going independent to have the freedom to make whatever weird projects like BBBlaster about dogs that control spaceships like its a toy or golf with boxing gloves.

No More Robots x Game Devs of Color Expo Grant

Alex A.K.

Sisi Jiang

Perfect Garbage

Charles McGregor

Nana Moon

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Get regular updates from former speakers and expo participants by following our 2020 alumni list on Twitter!

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