This year’s Tribeca Festival will once again feature video games, as well as the debut of Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds, a documentary about the famed game developer, and a Q&A with Kojima himself. That’s happening alongside the festival’s official selection of seven games, which includes titles like Goodbye Volcano High and Stray Gods.
At 5 p.m. ET on June 17 at Spring Studios, Tribeca Games will hold a screening for Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds, which is a documentary by Glen Milner and Ben Hilton that delves into Kojima’s creative process and tells the story of Kojima Productions. This is its world premiere, and it will be followed by a Q&A where attendees can Kojima whatever they want about the documentary and his experience as a game developer.
Since 2021, Tribeca Games has been a wider part of the Tribeca Festival celebration, typically highlighting narrative-focused games that are doing new and exciting things, such as American Arcadia, As Dusk Falls, A Plague Tale: Requiem, and Kena: Bridge of Spirits. This year’s lineup features seven games, with the headliner being The Expanse: A Telltale Series, the first new episodic adventure game from the revitalized Telltale.
Tribeca is really leaning into featuring this game as well, as it is hosting a panel called Exploring Deep Space: How Telltale and Deck Nine created Expanse Stories in an Interactive Medium, where its developers will discuss the challenges in creating a narrative-focused video game prequel to the popular TV show. Other game selections will be featured in the Tribeca Games Spotlight and have playable demos at Tribeca’s Games & Immersive Experience. Tribeca Games 2023’s selections also include the following:
- A Highland Song: A rhythm-based platformer from developer Inkle Studios.
- Chants of Sennaar: A colorful puzzle-adventure game inspired by the myth of Babel developed by Rundisc and published by Focus Entertainment.
- Despelote: A emergent slice-of-life game set in Ecuador during its qualifying run for the 2001 Word Cup developed by Julián Cordero, Sebastián Valbuena, Gabe Cuzzillo, Ian Berman, and Niall Tessier-Lavigne and published by Panic.
- Goodbye Volcano High: A choice-based adventure game about animals trying to finish high school while also knowing that the world is going to end. It is developed by KO_OP.
- Nightscape: A 2.5D platformer based on ancient Arabian stories from developer Mezan Studios.
- Stray Gods: An RPG musical where players solve a mystery in a modern world intertwined with Greek mythology. It’s developed by Summerfall Studios and published by Humble Games.
Those who can’t attend the Tribeca Festival should look forward tothe Tribeca Games Spotlight, which is part of Summer Game Fest and will be live-streamed on Tribeca’s YouTube channel at 3 p.m. ET on June 9.
