This article was originally published in Issue 7 of the ICG Zine, September 2024. It was reformatted in January 2026, but has not been edited further.

Bit Bash served up its 14th semi-regular event last month, and this one was XTREME. The alternative games festival took over the iO Theater to show off sixteen radical games from local Chicago designers and across the world, alongside an electric party atmosphere full of drinks, raffles, and music.

In a world full of crowded Steam pages and under-the radar itch.io releases, Bit Bash’s alternative games festivals are a wonderful opportunity to see and be seen in the gaming space. They offer unique experiences unavailable anywhere else and bring the social aspect back into playing games.

Once upon a time, people would gather in arcades to cheer each other on as someone reached a kill screen in Donkey Kong or pulled off a difficult fatality in Mortal Kombat. Now social play is relegated to online Discord servers and often toxic voice chat. Bit Bash brings back some of that old communal gaming experience in the form of couch co-op games projected on massive wall screens, wild arcade experiences for people to cheer on, and demos so unique that you can’t help but turn to the person next to you to marvel at what you just saw.

The only downside to Bit Bash is that there is not enough of them. Bit Bash festivals are few and far between, almost completely localized to the North Side (but rarely in the same place twice), and offer few ways to follow up that aren’t simply wish-listing a game on Steam. Networking opportunities are limited and – perhaps the biggest crime – there are no gallery spaces for these games to exist long term.

That said, if you have the opportunity to attend a Bit Bash event, do it! It’s a radical experience that you won’t soon forget.

XTREME GAMES

Xtreme Bit Bash showcased sixteen games: seven from local Chicago devs and nine from around the world. Featuring one-of-a-kind control schemes, vintage throwbacks, and wild new experiences, each was captivating in its own way. Below are some notable experiences.

Chairdevil: By Bobby Lockhart and Andy Saia

In a festival full of unique controllers, Chairdevil stood out. The game is a kart-racer in which you control an athlete in an athletic wheelchair using an actual real-life wheelchair.

Utilizing sensors attached to the wheels, the game controls exactly as you would expect. You gain speed by spinning the wheels forward, drift by spinning them in opposite directions, and back up by spinning them backwards. It is a genuine workout that rewards good arm strength.

Rude Dew: By Night City

Going from wheelchair to cleaning implement, Rude Dew sees you squeezing an actual sponge to catch and squeeze falling fruit to wring the juice from them, all while avoiding rotten fruit and corrosive batteries.

The challenge is in timing your squeezes and finding the right pressure to put on the controller, which is incredibly delicate and can only be squeezed from the sides. It was a delightful arcade game, combining beautifully grotesque imagery with a wonderfully tactile experience.

Bloodrage Fight Club: By Miki Straus and Kana Mellon

Completing the trifecta of one-of-a-kind control schemes, Bloodrage Fight Club sees players go head-to head in a punch-out using an actual punching bag as a controller. Sensors on both sides measure how many times the bag is struck. The player who punches the most wins. Never before has a game encouraged you to abuse its controller so much.

Bloodrage Fight Club is incredibly simple, incredibly engaging, and further proof that anything can be a controller if you put your mind to it.

Genesis: By Colter Wehmeier

Genesis utilizes VR motion tracking in a very non-VR rail shooter experience. A headphone-mounted motion sensor lets you move the camera by tilting your head, giving a “peering-through-a window” effect.

As a spectator the game is incomprehensible, but once you are in the driver’s seat it somehow makes sense. You use a Vive controller as a light-gun to aim at targets along a vectorized flight path, though it is sometimes a little difficult to tell what you are aiming at. Moving your head in tandem with your hands becomes surprisingly intuitive and is a neat experiment in non-VR motion control.

Palestine Skating Game: By PalestineSkatingGame

Play as a young Palestinian woman skating through the occupied streets of Palestine tagging buildings and occupying soldiers alike in this Middle Eastern punk mashup of Jet Set Radio and Splatoon.

The game is still very early in development – the landscape is sparse and it lags horribly when too many enemies are on screen – but the vibes punch through loud and clear, and it is never not satisfying to grind on rails and spray paint larger-than-life soldiers in neon pinks and greens.

Friday Night Funkin’: By ninja_muffin99

Bit Bash offered the rare opportunity to play a rhythm game the way God intended: on a classic Dance Dance Revolution dance pad.

Friday Night Funkin’ does little to revolutionize the rhythm game genre, but that’s not the point. It delivers exactly what you want from it, and the arcade-like setting only enhanced its charm. Even as someone terrible at rhythm games, I had a blast making a fool of myself in front of half a dozen spectators.

Street Uni X: By daffodil and friends

Street Uni X swaps skateboards for unicycles in this love letter to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series on Playstation 1.

That is entertaining on its own, but what really stood out at Bit Bash was its dedication to recreating the PS1 experience, going so far as to be demoed on a CRT television! The game looked perfectly at home on CRT, to the point that if you had told me it was a long-lost PS1 game, I might have believed you.

This list only covered half the games featured at Xtreme Bit Bash. Check out bitbashchicago.com for more information on this and other Bit Bash events, both past and future!