2021 Game Devs of Color Expo

We gathered online for the second year in a row — this time with added networking!

Relive the memories

Get a quick look at the 4-day online event.

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2021 games list

Button City

Subliminal

A narrative adventure about cute animals, friendship, and arcades.

A screenshot from "Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To."

Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 to

Soft Not Weak

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

Neil Jones AKA (Aerial_Knight)

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield is a Narrative Runner that tells the story of Wally. . Explore a game world with a dope-tastic soundtrack featuring the authentic sounds of Detroit Artist.

1000 Deaths

Pariah Interactive

1000 Deaths is a game about confronting your interpersonal conflicts and the effects of media on the psyche. Play through episodes, switching between perspectives of eclectic characters, and making decisions that you’ll take to the grave.

3D Print Your Life

ScienceHerWay

3D Print Your Life is a game where you work at a 3D printing shop meeting all kinds of people who use 3D printing to fulfill their different orders.

A Shiba Story

Foxdog Farms

A Shiba Story is a slice of life game / pet simulator about learning how to take care of a Shiba Inu. This is a game about the everyday joys & quirks of sharing life with a furry friend.

After School Afterlife

Mini Bunnies

Listen to the beat to navigate obstacles in this Peranakan-inspired metroidvania! Talk to strange and funny ghosts, and help them with their problems. Fill your journal as you explore the mansion. You may just uncover its secret past...

Alpaca Stacka

Michelle Ma and Sebastian Baracaldo

Alpaca Stacka is a wholesome 3D adventure platformer where you play as Paz, a kind alpaca dedicated to helping their animal friends.

Anuchard

stellarNull

Battle monsters, solve puzzles, and reawaken the lost Guardians in an action RPG inspired by classics. Rescue the souls of lost townspeople in the dungeon and restore the civilization of Anuchard while wielding the mythical Audros Bell.

Bakemono : Demon Brigade

SuperSane

Anime Themed High Mobility Slasher Shooter VR Mech Sim
Bakemono is Early Access on Steam

Boiling Point!

Anoba Studios

Boiling Point! is a light/medium strategy game where 2-6 players find themselves as crustaceans trapped in a pot trying to escape! Fight to the top, attack the chefs… or your friends? Whatever you do, make sure you stay cool!

Claw Arena

Mocha Chili

Claw Arena is an arena fighting game for mobile devices featuring unique one-finger controls. Select one of 8 animal warriors with distinct movesets and fight your way through the tournament to become the champion of the Combat League!

Come with Me

Xin Ye

Come with Me is a two-player cooperative adventure game set in a puzzle-filled magical world.

Common'hood

Plethora Project

Common’hood is a building and community management game with highly customizable base building tools.  Lead a community of squatters occupying an abandoned factory and craft a society that can thrive.

Danny Fisher Kills the Government

Danny Fisher

Danny Fisher Kills the Government is a satirical political RPG, taking the player through the journey of Danny Fisher, as he and a party of local New Yorkers foster community, tussle with cops, girlbosses, CEOs, and Mayor de Blasio himself.

Date Night Bowling

Serenity Forge

Ten characters in search of love gather around two neon-lit bowling alleys for some date night bowling. Choose your character, find your date, and try your best to hit it off—or at least hit some pins.

Do Not Buy This Game

Do Not Buy This Game

Kingblade Games

Do Not Buy This Game is a Comedy Walk-Sim where the game is being built as you play it!

DOT’S HOME

Rise-Home Stories Project, Weathered Sweater, Neil Jones, and James Williams.

DOT’S HOME is a single-player video game that follows a young Black woman in Detroit as she travels through time to relive key moments in her family’s history where race, place, and home collide in difficult choices.

Emergency Monster Team

Emergency Monster Team

Toro Comics

Nadel Pierce is a Berserker Paramedic who is headed back to work at the Dendsville Area Emergency Hospital after the events of “ThePipe Man".

Epiphany City

Big Shield Games

Turn paintings into real life objects to solve puzzles in clever and imaginative ways. Follow Lily Parks, a girl who's lost all hope, as she inherits the world's strongest superhero's powers, leaving it up to her to save the world.

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.

Get-A-Grip Chip

Redstart Interactive

Get-A-Grip Chip is a charming and satisfyingly challenging grappling hook 2D platformer. Master the hook, fling through the increasingly intense floors of Roboco Mfg, and escape chases with Scan-It Janet.

Himig

OnionBlaze

A calm game of everyday life, precious memories, and creating your own destiny.

Hot Pot For One

Rachel Li & Qin Yin

"You are alone on a cold Christmas night, stuck at home, in a foreign country. You get through it by cooking a hot dish intended for six people.
"

Innchanted

DragonBear Studios

Innchanted is a co-op adventure where you discover magical potions, serve otherworldly guests, and pacify monsters. Gather your party and journey on a quest to overcome the evil Wizard – your landlord!

Keylocker | Turn Based Cyberpunk Action

Moonana

In a silent world where music has been prohibited, BOBO, a singer, will band 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

KindFolx

Tristan Barona

KindFolx is a real time, PvE card battling dungeon crawler about a monster named Reinus who embarks on a quest to dismantle a human oppressing dictatorship led by a Monsterfolk General.

Last Legacy

Nix Hydra

You’re trapped in a fantasy MMORPG! Team up with a cunning mage, an enigmatic knight, or a roguish mercenary to save the world, and maybe find love along the way—who will you choose?

Loddlenaut

Moon Lagoon

A cozy survival game about raising cute alien creatures and cleaning up a polluted ocean planet.

Lonesome Village

Ogre Pixel

Lonesome Village is a puzzle-solving adventure with social simulation.

Luminous Plume

XenoHorizon

Experience thrilling action, epic boss fights, and an electrifying soundtrack in this vibrant 2D action RPG.

METEORA

Big Boot Games

METEORA is a Fast-paced Survival Action Survival game with Meteors (Think burnout in space with Meteors).

Midautumn

Team Midautumn

Midautumn is a Supernatural game about Asian diaspora. Blast evil spirits and save your hometown from gentrification in this rogue-like dungeon crawler!

Mop Boy

Mop Boy Studios

Mom and Dad have finally put Mop Boy in charge of keeping their beloved pizzeria clean. But with grease monsters running amuck and a crooked health inspector on their tail, it's gonna take the whole family to keep the restaurant afloat.

Nainai's recipe

Fann & Mai

Nainai’s Recipe is a cooking game about simulating real-world cooking feelings in a stylized world. It's a story about a Chinese girl who live by herself during 2020. She will be learning family dishes, as well as the story of her grandma.

Neko Ghost, Jump!

Burgos Games

Neko Ghost, Jump! is a puzzle-platformer where you not only switch between 2D & 3D camera perspectives but also between your physical & ghost forms to solve puzzles, combat enemies, and clear levels faster.

Night Reverie

Somber Pixel

Night Reverie is a Puzzle/Adventure game in which a child must solve the mystery behind the distortion of his house.

Ochitsubaki

FEYXUAN

OCHITSUBAKI || 落ち椿 is a transgender JPN/ENG game about the impossibility of communicating trauma and hypermarginalized identity through a combination of visceral poetics, retro anime aesthetics, and the particular tenderness of a good duel

Onsen Master

Waking Oni Games

Onsen Master is a hot spring customer management game where players must create ingredients to match the various customer ailments, across the fantasy island of Izajima!

Our America VR

Fishean Studio

Our America is a branching narrative VR experience about being Black in America.

Out For Delivery

Heart Street

A playable documentary shot with a 360° camera. The 42 minute slice-of-life experience follows a food delivery courier in Beijing on January 23, 2020, the day before Lunar New Year's Eve and the day Wuhan shut down due to COVID-19.

PenPal Princess

Compact

Pen Pal Princess is a queer romcom visual novel about long distance relationships and online dating. Correspond with potential suitors through letter writing, email, and DMs to convince them to rescue you from your secluded princess tower!

Raji: An Ancient Epic

Nodding Heads Games

A young girl named Raji has been chosen by the gods to stand against the demonic invasion of the human realm. Her destiny? To rescue her younger brother and face the demon lord Mahabalasura

RP7

Turtle Cream

RP7 is the most minimalist and abstract dungeon crawler RPG. In the game player can’t control their character. Instead player should setup character's adventure path by rolling 7 slots in the screen, to control their character INDIRECTLY.

Rules of Alchemy

Jabari Alii

Master the elements in this intense spell combo roguelike. Explore the procedural world of Istal as you uncover secrets, collect magic, craft items, and embark on a grand branching narrative.

RUNNER

Truant Pixel, LLC

RUNNER is an arcade-inspired VR action featuring first-person driving gameplay and shooting-gallery gunplay. Players take to the street at high speed, weaving in-and-out of traffic while fending off waves of enemies over 7 unique stages.

SAMUDRA

Khayalan Arts

SAMUDRA is a 2D surreal adventure game with a theme of environmental awareness & an emotional twist.

Sephonie

Analgesic Productions

Memories linger across time, deep under Sephonie Island. Explore a massive cave network, link with unidentified species, and unravel scientific and spiritual mysteries, watched over by a supernatural being existing beyond human history.

She Dreams Elsewhere

Studio Zevere

She Dreams Elsewhere is a surreal adventure RPG about dreams, nightmares, and self-reflection.

Skate Story

by Sam Eng

Skate down into the underworld and recover what's been lost.

Slime Heroes

Pancake Games

A game where the slimes are finally the heroes. Play with your friends as cute slimes and save the world from an evil corruption. Find different weapons and create your own unique magic abilities to express the way you want to adventure.

Sokobond Express

Jose Hernandez

Puzzle mix of chemistry and rails!

Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator

Strange Scaffold

Buy, sell, and trade organs in a strange and evolving universe. Dive into the quivering innards of alien capitalism in the sci-fi body horror market tycoon game you didn't know you needed.  

Spell Blaster

JUMP Game Studio

Spell Blaster is a 2D top-down action game inspired by retro classics! The game tasks players with navigating mazes, destroying monsters, avoiding dangerous traps and solving perilous puzzles!

START AGAIN: a prologue

START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: a prologue

insertdisc5

Experience a time loop at the end of the world.

Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum

Marie Wong & Pauline Kong

Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum is a competitive 2-5 player light weight Dim Sum set collection and action management tabletop game offering a delicious cultural experience. Steamers with Dim Sum are stacked and placed on a turntable.

Supersonic Rhyme Chamber

No Static Games

Rap battle your way through colorful lands as you encounter strong rivals and the dopest of friends. As you improve your skills and collect all the keys, will you be able to become a legendary MC?

The Gardener and the Wild Vinesme Chamber

Finite Reflection Studios

Leap, slash, and climb your way to the top of fantastical towers by dashing at flowers growing on a procedural vine. Explore multiple unique environments as you unravel this love story about love and identity.

Theseus

Sisi Jiang

Theseus never killed the Minotaur. He found common cause with Asterion, until he didn't anymore. A tale of diaspora, gender, and survival.

ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area

Veritable Joy Studios

ValiDate is a visual novel about 12 struggling singles attempting to find love and friendship in a world ruled by capitalism. We feature a cast full of queer characters of color and contain stories never explored in gaming before.

Venba

Visai Studios

Venba is a narrative cooking game, where you play as an Indian mom, who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s. Players will cook various dishes and restore lost recipes and explore in this story about family, love, loss and more

Show all 61 games

2021 speaker list

Muse en Lystrala (she/her, they/them)

The End of Crunch

Sherveen Uduwana (he/him)

Design Goodwill: Establishing trust in your game's opening minutes

Lexi "Pizza_Yeti" (she/her)

Finding Your Footing as a Content Creator

Ed Lago (he/him)

The Challenges of Managing a remote team working on a live VR product

Jonathan Williams(he/him)

Your Virtual Reality Xperience

Derek Lieu (he/him)

Top Game Trailer Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Chella Ramanan (she/her)

Designing Internal Worlds

Tyriq Plummer (he/him)

I Love Procedural Generation (And So Should You!)

Younès Rabii

SUPER IS HOT: Making Games By Breaking & Combining Others

Dani Lalonders (she/they)

Entering the industry for the first time.

Joe Palmer (he/him)

10 Lessons from 10 Years in Game Development

Mohammad Fahmi (he/him)

Feels Like Home: Introducing a Diverse Setting to the World

Alex Lu (he/him)

Applying Fortune 500 Project Management to Your Board Game Project

Alex A.K. (they/them), Eva-Léa Longue Ngambi (she/her), Francesca Esquenazi (she/her)

Cooperating as Game Worker Cooperatives

Saleem Dabbous (he/him)

Production is Self Care

Banana Chan (she/they), Ella Ampongan (she/her), Yeonsoo Julian Kim (they/she), Jeeyon Shim (she/they), Victoria Caña (she/they)

Finding Your Voice: Developing Your Brand (in Tabletop)

Cam Perry (they/them)

Bad Media has Better Ideas

Kayode Ceiriog Shonibare-Lewis (he/him)

Racial Bias, Reverse Heredity and the Parents of Custom Avatars

Sisi Jiang (they/them)

MAKE MORE ANIME SHIT

Davionne Gooden (he/him)

Staying Sane Making Games While Everything is On Fire

Neha Patel (she/her), Hassan DuRant (he/him), Steph Nguyen (she/her), Calbert Warner (he/him)

The Cost of Game Audio - For Freelancers and Clients

Shawn Alexander Allen (he/they)

Treachery in Beatdown City: A Postmortem

Sydney Adams (she/her)

The Value of Vision - Creating Socially Conscious Games

Junae Benne (she/her)

Afrofuturism is Now! Well.. it could be

Matthew Glenn (he/him)

Industry Experience: Succeeding When You're New & Don't Have Any

Richard (KirbyKid) Terrell (he/him)

Why There's No Such Thing as Black Mechanics

Roc Lee (he/him)

How many sounds do I need for my game? (How to think like a sound designer)

Joe Tirado (he/him)

Creating a Kick Ass Game Store Page!

Bahiyya Khan (she/her)

hell is a teenage girl: examining the representation of teenage girls in video games

Gynesys (she/her)

Hype Train!: Twitch Affiliate in 30 Days

Jose Abalos (he/him)

Beating the Sunken Cost Fallacy and Choosing a Great Project

Victoria Tran (she/her)

Bad Community Management Advice

Aubrey Jane Scott (she/her)

The Tea of Starting My Own Games Studio

Xalavier Nelson Jr. (he/him)

MAKE YOUR GAME IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS

Gabriela Ponce Curlango (she/her)

From Past Experience to Future Value: Broadening Pathways into Gaming

Kai Little-White (she/her)

Hacking Barriers to Diversity with Visual Novels and Speculative Sci Fi

John R. Diaz (he/him)

Design Your Life: Sustainability while Developing Games From Anywhere

Shana T Bryant (she/her)

Do a barrel roll! A New Normal for Game Devs & Game Development

Show all 48 speakers

2021 game dev grant winners

This year, we gave a total of $150,000 to six game creators of color.

Humble Bundle Game Creator of Color Award

Younès Rabii

Younès has been a game developer for the past 9 years, and recently started to dual-class as a game researcher. They specialize in making strange ludic experiments and pitching new game ideas like a conspiracy theorist. Their work has been exposed in the French libraries and embassies. Younès' nindo is to make games that can surprise both you and them!

The Game Devs of Color Expo VR Grant

Hessvacio Hassan

Hessvacio Hassan is the creator and lead developer of Museum Multiverse, a VR series for HTC and Oculus. His past releases include the highly popular VR experience, Don't Look Away VR, which has been downloaded over a quarter million times to date.

The Game Devs of Color Expo Grant

Marina Ayano Kittaka

Neil "Aerial_Knight" Jones

Veritable Joy Studios

Flying Cat Studios

Follow our 2021 alumni

Get regular updates from former speakers and expo participants by following our 2021 alumni list on Twitter!

See the list
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