The future of public game arts festivals and non-commercial games culture

Freeplay Parallels in 2024 in Naarm Melbourne, Australia

This year the oldest living art games non-profit in the world, Freeplay (Australia), announced they were like a year away from shutting down, so they're running a survey on what to do. They have some money, enough for one last conference, or one last showcase? Or should they do something else?

It's easy to see this as part of a broader global discourse about the future of non-commercial game arts events around the world. There used to be many more events, but now there's not. What's happening?

A lot of discussion happened on Bluesky, where it was instantly lost and forgotten in the churn of the feed. So I'm writing this post to archive / preserve some of that Discourse. I also want to add some of my own thoughts as an extra-special non-Australian outsider who visits occasionally.

Notes on level design workflow for the 3D platformer Big Hops

overview of the Ocean intro level

I made some levels for the 3D platformer game Big Hops by Luckshot Games, and it's finally released! You can now play it on Steam, Switch, and PS5.

So far the game is getting 7s, 8s, and 9s. Most players like the level design, though some kinda hate it, which is fair -- we went for a chill cozy-ish hands-off no-combat experience that won't hit for everyone, but the people who like it really do like it. I'd compare it to Psychonauts or Banjo Kazooie, with some Mario Galaxy / Breath of the Wild / Sly Cooper bits.

Despite the lack of complete universal adoration, I do think we figured out decent level design practices that worked OK for this scope / type of 3D action game. Some of these dev practices may surprise you; it certainly surprised me when I realized what we were doing. So in this post, I'll talk about some of our level design workflow for Big Hops...

SPOILER ALERT: I spoil some mechanics and levels, but not in detail. I don't spoil any of the story or the ending. Don't worry about it.

new Quake map: "One Need Not Be A House" for Quake Brutalist Jam 3

"One Need Not Be A House" is a large non-linear concrete bunker island / brick brutalism map that I made for Quake Brutalism Jam 3 -- a huge single player mega mod for Quake 1 with 77 (!!!) modernist-inspired levels made by the community.

You can download and play it for free here, as part of the QBJ3 mod at the Quake community hub Slipseer. This time the jam organizers even made a 100% free standalone download with no Quake purchase required!

(BUG REPORT, 13 JANUARY 2026: there's some reports that sometimes my map crashes Ironwail v0.81, which is the engine packaged in the standalone download. Sorry. As a workaround, you can use vkQuake instead. Or just skip it, there's 76 other levels to play anyway!)

In this post I talk about my inspirations, intent, and what happens in the level. 

This is your last SPOILER WARNING: if you care about spoilers, play the level for yourself first.