Festival 2026
Two days at ACMI. A ticketed Summit on Wednesday 7 October, and a free Showcase of impact games across Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8 October.
Summit 2026
Wednesday 7 October, at ACMI, Fed Square, Melbourne. Three separately ticketed sessions bringing together developers, educators, researchers and change-makers for engaging presentations and important conversations. Every game discussed on stage is downstairs on the Showcase floor to be played.
Games for Climate and Community
How can games help people understand the role of community in climate response, and move from understanding to action? This session brings together presentations and a panel discussion exploring how games, simulation and play are being used to communicate climate risk, support adaptation and strengthen community. Speakers will share experiences from research, commercial studios and facilitation practice, before opening the conversation to how developers, researchers, communities and institutions can work together to make games a more useful part of the climate response.
Sidney Icarus
Sidney Icarus (they/them) is a systems designer and evaluator who believes that we cannot even begin to solve complex problems until we play with them. Sidney engages complexity through story and simulation in climate, healthcare, and security. They also enjoy simplicity, like good Melbourne coffee and a cat called Radar.
Nico King
Nico King is the Co-founder and Executive Creative Director of Chaos Theory Games, an award-winning, for-purpose game studio based in Sydney. Since founding the studio with two childhood friends, Nico has worked with organisations including Google, Samsung, and the UN World Food Programme. The studio was named Studio of the Year at the 2024 Australian Game Developer Awards, and their game Crab God won Best in Environmental Impact at the 2025 Games for Change Awards.
Vipin Dhunnoo
Vipin Dhunnoo is an architect, XR designer and PhD candidate at Bond University, where his research develops immersive VR as a tool for climate communication. With postgraduate study in sustainable environments and urban planning, he brings a background in spatial design and storytelling to interactive media. His past creative work, Neoasis, was selected for exhibition at the Australian Pavilion forecourt for Dubai Expo 2021, and his research has been published in a Q1 Scopus journal and presented at the Queensland Games Festival, UN SDG Action Festival and UNESCO Paris.
Kiri Bear
Kiri Bear is a funeral celebrant, artist, facilitator and game designer building regenerative cultures from the inside out. They hold space for feelings so that humans can find their way back to right relationship with self, other and Earth. They create opportunities for people to turn toward the hard realities of climate change, colonisation and violence against women, to feel into them and discover pathways to connection, authenticity and evolution. Kiri designs and delivers processes that help teams collaborate, navigate difficult conversations and find ways to flourish together.
Games for Health and Wellbeing
How can games support mental health and wellbeing, and what does it take to design and deliver them well? This session brings together presentations and a panel discussion exploring the evidence, the lived experience and the design practice behind games made for wellbeing. Speakers will share experiences from research, clinical practice, community settings and independent studios, before opening the conversation to how researchers, developers, health professionals and the people these games are made for can work together to make games a more credible and effective part of care.
Ceri Hutton
Ceri Hutton is an experienced project manager, designer, and games industry consultant specialising in strategic operations, data analytics, and go-to-market strategy. He holds a Global Executive MBA from Monash University, has over a decade of experience delivering bespoke projects, and is the director of the Smart Program, a specialised games career accelerator that creates career pathways for future industry leaders. Previously, Ceri worked for the peak industry body IGEA, where he managed the co-working space The Arcade, directed the Australian Game Developer Awards, and led strategic operations and industry partnerships for Games Connect Asia-Pacific.
Dr. Rachel Kowert
Rachel Kowert, Ph.D is a research psychologist, award winning author, and globally recognized leader facilitating global policy and product development with non-profit, governmental, and non-governmental agencies for more than 15 years, through data-driven research focused on mental health and trust and safety in digital games. She has spoken about her work to thousands of people across the globe, including the United Nations and the United States Congress. Rachel is also the founder of Psychgeist, a multimedia content production studio for the science of games and pop culture.
Dr. Michelle Chen
Dr. Michelle Chen is a game developer with 15 years experience in programming, design and production. She is a GamesIndustry.biz 100 Future Talent, IGDA Next Gen Leader and Museums Victoria Culture Maker. She completed a PhD in Design, developing video games about mental health at RMIT University in Australia. Since graduating, she has spun out her research into Mental Jam, a games studio dedicated to co-creating impactful experiences that explore mental health.
Cheryl Budiman
Cheryl is a Melbourne-based Game Artist and Multimedia Designer with a Bachelor of Design in Animation from RMIT University. Her journey from animation and visual storytelling into game development led her to Mental Jam, where she explores how creativity can support conversations around mental health. Through 2D illustration, vector graphics and game art, she is passionate about creating experiences that connect with younger audiences and make ideas around emotions, empathy and social challenges easier to understand. She hopes to use art and games to help young people feel seen, understood and heard.
Rebecca Kerr
Rebecca is a game developer, lecturer, and writer based in Western Australia. A dedicated advocate for Bipolar Disorder, their creative work and indie game narratives purposefully explore mental health and psychological conditions to raise awareness and combat systemic stigma. In the classroom, Rebecca works closely with neurodivergent students, actively adapting their teaching practices to support diverse learning needs. An experienced educational speaker and presenter, recent events include Games for Change AP 2025 and Book Fair Australia Melbourne 2026.
Games for Learning
How can we make it easier for educators to adopt, develop and effectively use games for learning? This session brings together presentations and a panel discussion exploring the opportunities, challenges and practical support needed to expand the use of games across education. Speakers will share experiences from research, development and practice, before opening the conversation to how institutions, educators, researchers and game creators can work together to make games a more accessible and effective part of learning.
Professor Gillian Vesty
Gillian Vesty is a Professor in the College of Business and Law at RMIT University. She is the Chair of RMIT Education Committee, a member of CPA Australia, Board Member of Games for Change Australia, Board Member of Southwest Healthcare Victoria and on the Editorial Board of Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal. Prof Vesty's value-based healthcare research aligns management accounting with healthcare funding and budgeting to address health and wellbeing challenges. Prof Vesty is a keen developer of serious games to simulate real world challenges with social impact.
Dr. Dale Linegar
Dr. Dale Linegar is Chief Technology Officer at BlueRoom Simulations, where he helps design mixed reality solutions for first responders and defence medics around the world. He holds a PhD from RMIT University examining values in serious game design and has published research on serious games, simulations and virtual environments in education. He founded Games for Change Asia-Pacific and has more than 20 years of experience creating award-winning serious games and simulations. Dale also co-founded The Lab, a nationwide network of technology clubs for young people with Asperger's Syndrome, and has served on the board of Simulation Australasia.
Dr. Bron Stuckey
Bron is a passionate advocate for games in K-12 learning and has been immersed in gameful learning practices for the past 25 years. Over that time Bron has initiated, advised, designed and supported educational programs within large scale game environments like Murder Under the Microscope, Quest Atlantis and Minecraft. She has worked with organisations such as the NSW and Victorian Departments of Education, Indiana and Arizona State Universities, and Questacon, where she was the 2023 Educational Cyber Mind in Residence. Her passion project GameChanger Girls Esports League celebrates girls as STEM creatives.
Garry Westmore
Garry Westmore is a senior education producer in the ACMI education team. As an educator who has worked in the classroom and in the museum context, he has a wealth of experience in designing learning programs including workshops, lessons, talks, and learning resources in both physical and online formats.
Each of the three sessions is ticketed separately.
Showcase 2026
Wednesday 7 + Thursday 8 October
10:00 to 17:00
A free public showcase of impact games from across the region, open to everyone with no ticket required.
Free entry
Fireline
An immersive fire preparedness experience. Players work through a home in the path of an approaching bushfire, clearing what would carry the flames closer. Built in Unreal Engine as part of a Master of Immersive Design at UNSW, it turns public safety advice into something you do rather than read. Around five minutes per play.
Water at Our Feet
Begins in your own room. Passthrough blends your space with mixed reality before dissolving into a virtual coastline, carrying you from the year 2000 toward 2100. Your hands do the work: raise a flood wall, plant a seed, pull a brick free to reshape a building. Each action is a real adaptation used by coastal communities today, and the scene responds in real time to show what that choice means decades on. Built for Meta Quest 3 with native hand tracking, grown from a study with participants across Mauritius and the Gold Coast.
Orchestrate
A marketing technology simulation co-designed with industry, run as a five-year business game. Players manage a strategic budget across People, Process, Data and Technology, navigating trade-offs that drive customer acquisition, retention, satisfaction and revenue. Built for postgraduate and undergraduate students, it is designed to shift thinking from tool-first to ecosystem-led. Around ten minutes to play through.
Capability Quest
A playable world built on RMIT's campuses in Melbourne, Shanghai, Singapore and Vietnam. Students travel between them, discover landmarks and take on challenges: riding through the city, shooting hoops, helping a friend, hunting carbon credits. Their choices shape what happens next. Each challenge brings one of RMIT's graduate capabilities to life, so creative and critical thinking, collaboration, adaptability and global citizenship are practised through action rather than read about.
Bobarista
A cozy narrative game where you craft bubble tea, meet a diverse cast of characters and help them through personal struggles. Each minigame is built on a different mental health coping mechanism. Developed through co-design with young people, drawing on their lived experience, by Mental Jam, a studio spun out of a PhD in Design developing video games about mental health at RMIT.
Heartlog
A space for honest anonymous writing, where strangers occasionally recognise themselves in each other. It applies relational design to everyday emotional life, asking whether digital products can facilitate genuine human connection rather than simulate it. Players write asynchronously to a shared server, and a weekly question frames what everyone is responding to.
Copycat
A narrative catventure about a pet learning to deal with abandonment, and a human forced to surrender them. Two souls travel together to work out what family and home actually mean. Winner of the Impact Award and the ACMI Audience Award at the 2025 Australian Game Developer Awards, and an AWGIE for its script in 2026. Spoonful of Wonder has donated $3107 to the Lost Dogs and Cats Home in Melbourne, and gives a dollar for every physical PS5 copy sold.
Silver Lake National Park
A cozy PC game and a supernatural spin-off of The Last Werewolf. Players step into the paws of Ranger Logan, a werebear navigating work, relationships and Bipolar Disorder. Through a day-in-the-life lens it explores how Bipolar affects daily energy, not just mood: running tours and campfire stories keeps visitors happy, but pushing too hard drains Logan's battery, and like a bear reacting to the seasons that battery shifts with summer and winter. Players choose between Logan's ambitions and the invisible labour of staying well.
Virtual Performance Simulator
A VR experience that lets musicians rehearse one of the hardest moments of their training: walking on stage. Players begin backstage waiting for a cue, then enter a realistic concert hall and perform to a virtual audience. For musicians with few chances to play in real concert halls, it offers somewhere safe to make mistakes and repeat the moment until nerves turn into familiarity. Created by the University of Melbourne.
Kin Keeper
A game about a story not often seen in games, built by a researcher whose PhD investigated whether puzzle video games can improve resilience. It carries a deliberate level of frustration, players choose when to end, and the characters settle into a new normal rather than a resolution.
Games for Change Australia 2026 is presented in partnership with ACMI, Fed Square, Melbourne.
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Games for Change Australia acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, work and play, and pays respect to Elders past and present.