It's been seven years of bringing playful and alternative culture to Enschede and we want to celebrate!

Have you played a game so much that you dream about it? Inspired by games like SoulCalibur, Super Smash Bros, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, combined with our theme of the year: 

A pillow fight between diverse dreamy characters. Wear your pajamas and join early to create your own fighter and put it in the dreamworld: choose your special moves, your sound effects and your combos. May the best pillow wielder win!

We will provide the fighting pillows, the ring, and a workshop to prepare your character. Some rules will apply: no kicking, no spitting, no biting, no hair pulling, your pillow will be your weapon and your shield. You can block the punches only with your pillow or with your forearms. Niels F. Rodenburg will be our narrator and referee, and one person in the audience will act as the player: will have the controller and will score the points - and activate 

Score some points before your life bar runs out! The ultimate champion will win the 

TIME: 18:00-20:00 character building workshop
           20:30-22:30 tournament
WHEN: February 28
LOCATION: BlackBrick, Hoge Bothofstraat 29, 7511 ZA Enschede
PRICE: 5€ before 20:00, 7€ after 20:00

TICKETS

Pillow Brawl Tournament! - 7 years of Sickhouse 

Between March and June, Sickhouse takes you to dreamy liminal places of Enschede to get into Dream Mode and explore in between realities. 

 are playful and collective dreaming sessions hosted by artist and LARP designer 

. You are all welcome to join for one or more walks. These sessions will lead to the creation of a final ritual session hosted the 21st of June.



CrystalBath Dreamwalk is a role-playing and dream-building experience that explores the boundaries between reality and imagination. At its core, this event is about creating and inhabiting collective imaginary spaces—something akin to sharing a dream or enter a hallucination state with others.


During the CrystalBath Dreamwalk, we’ll use role-playing techniques to co-create a dreamscape, step into it, and dream it for one another. Through a series of prompts, warm-ups, and exercises, we’ll transition into a shared state of “lucid dreaming” while being physically awake. Together, we’ll explore this newly imagined landscape by walking, interacting with each other, observing nature and birds at a tranquil Kirstalbad nature preserve, and discovering the new symbolism in every detail.

In this experience, you’ll exist in a dual state: both yourself and not yourself, both a dreamer and a passerby in someone else’s dream, exploring the fluidity of identity and the interconnectedness of our inner worlds.

After the dreamwalk, we’ll come together to document our dreams and reflect on what these shared dreams might reveal about ourselves, our relationships, and the nature of dreaming itself.

This event is open to everyone, no prior experience is needed—just an open mind and a willingness to dream and play collectively.

In order to join the walks we ask you to 

.
You will receive an e-mail a few days before the walk with all the info and instructions.

🕐 Sunday, March 9
⛲ Meeting time and place : 

 at the train station Enschede next to OV Fiets rental, or 


⏱️ Duration: 3 hours
🧣 What to bring : warm clothes and walking shoes, thermo with a warm drink. Arrive on a bike if you have one, or bring your NS card to rent an OV fiets at Enschede station (12:30).


Jana Romanova is a multidisciplinary artist. She works with performance, games, and collective storytelling as tools for research, creating meaningful connections, and transformation. Inspired by her background in journalism and visual arts, she designs and facilitates LARPs (live-action role plays) and social games in physical spaces as part of her art practice. She is regularly invited to host workshops and courses in LARP design and playful experiences at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Wageningen University, ArtEz, and iii in the Netherlands.

Dream Walk #1 CristalBath

DreamWalks are playful and collective dreaming sessions hosted by artist and LARP designer 

. Between March and June, Sickhouse takes you to dreamy liminal places of Enschede to get into Dream Mode and explore in between realities. You are welcome to join for one or more walks. These sessions will lead to the creation of a final ritual hosted the 21st of June.


Dreams shift, evolve, and echo through time. In this DreamWalk, we’ll weave dreams for a group of imaginary friends and trace how they change over the years. As we move through the vast open space of the former military airfield, we’ll listen—to the wind, to each other, to the landscape—and experiment with sound as a way of shaping and remembering dreams. It is a playful, dreamy and inspiring activity for the whole day.

(more info to come)

This event is open to everyone, no prior experience is needed—just an open mind and a willingness to dream and play collectively.

In order to join the walks we ask you to 

 .
You will receive an e-mail a few days before the walk with all the info and instructions.


🕐 Meeting time: 13:00
⛲ Meeting place : (tbc)
⏱️ Duration: 3 hours
🧣 Material to bring : Warm clothes and good shoes

Jana Romanova is a multidisciplinary artist inspired by misunderstandings. She works with performance and play practices, using photography and video to discover gaps between what we say and do. She takes these breaches in communication as possibilities for being together, whatever that could mean.

Currently, she is researching how games, play and playfulness can be tools for creating meaningful connections. She designs and facilitates LARPs (live-action role plays) and games in physical spaces as a part of her art practice.

DreamWalk #2 Flying Field

In 2025 following the progress of our reflection on play and activism, in the context of a hyper productive society, long conflicts, climate catastrophes, engulfing A.I, we want to take the risk, the counter intuitive move, the challenge to stay in bed, under the blanket, heads in the pillow. If new technologies infiltrate our beds to transform it into data to be mined, XR technologies, video games and virtual environments are also relevant media when delving into dreamworlds. This new edition wants to be another chapter of resistance where we self-organise to wander, dream, let our subconscious meet, invite our nightmares in...


The year program of Sickhouse and its main guest artists will be the leading process to develop the research and the selection for the festival.

Shall these remain only dreams? we said. Shall we not bring these things into wakeful beings?

” Ursula K. Le Guin in Changing planes : Social dreaming of the Frin.

Jana Romanova, LARP designer, is invited to design new playful experiences based on collective dreams, role-playing and dream-building experience that explores the boundaries between reality and imagination. At its core, the "DreamWalks" is about creating and inhabiting collective imaginary spaces—something akin to sharing a dream or a hallucination with others.

DreamWalk #1 : KristalBath - Sunday 9-03
DreamWalk #2 : Flying Field - Saturday 29-03
DreamWalk #3 : Walk in the ParQ - Thursday 24-04
DreamWalk #4 : to be announces


Wherever they stood it came, suddenly and simultaneously: refusal, refusal, refusal. And in a gust they collapsed into sleep

In the second part of the year we are inviting Sondi to create an immersive set-up for her games “Mbombo-Dream Echo” and “Sleep On It”. The set-up/playground is meant to become a collective space for daydreaming, reinventing hybrid places of rest. Mbombo builds on years of research into the nature of rest and dreaming as radical forms of resistance against capital, colonial violence on the Black body. (concept formalised and put into embodied practice by Tricia Hersey in her Nap Ministry and her book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.)

*JANNE SCHIMMEL (

Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy


In the third part of the year Sickhouse is inviting Janne Schimmel to dive into nightmare references and hack a game device to navigate them, in hybrid ways mixing sensorial experience and digital storytelling. Curious about the ambiguous space, nightmares create for fantasy and pleasure.

Exhausted, Burned out, anxious, overwhelmed are now recurrent adjectives we associate with our daily life and our work environments. Technology coming to save us is now selling us “digital rest points’, ‘CalmTok’,’ Raw-dogging a flight’ ‘Pokemon Sleep app’ to track our sleep and for the best ‘Sleep Tourism’ hotels with VR lucid dreams experiences... 

Rest is resistance but it is under attack, our escape is already trapped. Beyond the idea of healthiness, The Overkill wants to look at rest as an act of refusal, a protest against efficiency, productivity, or even this monetised idea of a  better version of ourselves. 

Theme 2025 : Return to Dreamland

SICKHOUSE PLAYFUL ART SPACE unwraps games as means to engage in diverse social topics with light, serious, absurd and challenging programs. Sickhouse is encouraging multi voices and multi disciplinary encounters.

Frontpage

In 2025 Sickhouse will have a new location and we are commissioning our first alternative arcade! 

Dutch artists Vincent Schoutsen and Wouter van Veldhoven are joining forces with French artists Leon Denise and Emilie Breslavetz from 

, to develop and build a playful arcade machine. Reflecting on the theme "Alternative control and Resistance" they are working together to create an arcade that will be playable at the new location of Sickhouse .

January and February are the months for creative brainstorms, starting with many ideas and getting inspired by their favorite objects. From buttons to plane cockpits, from sci-fi adventure to A.I relationships, the artists question the found objects they are working with, the role of the future player and the state of new technology in our society. 

In March, the 4 artists will be in Enschede for one week to bring everything together and build the arcade. They will present their process and progress during our monthly meet-up 

.

The Arcade will be officially inaugurated in September, during the re-opening of Sickhouse in its new location! This project is a pilot edition and hopefully we will be able to commission several alternative arcades in the years to come.

Arcade Mayhem

The Overkill Festival 2024 - RADICAL, JOY, RESISTANCE After-movie is here! 



The Overkill '24 has been over for a few months, but now we can re-live the festival and recall our favourite memories with the after-movie!

The Overkill is a playful gathering creating space for artists, makers and players to meet, exchange and learn from each other. In 2024 with the theme “Radical Joy Resistance” the festival looked into the role of play in movements of resistance. Curious to find out how a certain lightness, alternative rules, humour, joy and pleasure can be of support when going into the street, countering official narratives, refusing institutionalised violences.. The festival started in front of the city hall with a performance of women led by LasTesis, followed by a playful march of resistance through Enschede. The festival included an interactive exhibition, workshops, hosted film screenings, a day of interactive talks and panels, a karaoke of resistance and an experimental music program. 

The program has been curated by Marie Janin and Aike Lutkemoller, directors of the festival with the support of Zuraida Buter, Erik Peters, Resistencia videoludica, Jugar Juegitos and JacqNoise. The festival is produced by Sickhouse.

You can find more pictures of the festival in the 

.
The next edition of The Overkill Festival “Return to Dreamland” is taking us in an exploration from #CalmTok to rest as resistance. It will be held from 19 to 23 November 2025, in Enschede.

LINK to video of the opening performance of LasTesis 

Video production: Djannah DZ (@artiuss) 
Music: LASTESIS (@lastesis) and RADVLAD (@radvlad) 
Voiceover: Bas Helmig (@bashelmig)

The Overkill Festival '24 Aftermovie

From January 24th to 26th, the Global Game Jam took place. The theme of this year was ‘Bubble’. So, all over the world, almost half a million game makers, programmers, designers, creatives and curious people came together to create, share and inspire each other in a very bubbly edition.

Sickhouse set up a venue for the jam to take place in Enschede in GrensFrequentie - a working place for musicians and entrepreneurs with spaces available for rent.  People from different cities and various backgrounds came together and created six staggering games!

Don't pop and don't stop! Bublo is a roguelite game about creating as many bubble gum bubbles as you can without popping them. The goal is to collect as many points as you can; the bigger the bubble, the more points you get. You can also get coins to buy upgrades, like extra strength for your bubble gum or blowing speed. This game was created in HTML.

This addictive brain-rot game is created to satisfy the urge to destroy freshly created (evil) bubbles with different shapes inside them. Inspired by the satisfaction of popping bubbles, whether plastic or soap. The sound is great! This game was made in HTML with the assistance of ChatGPT.

BUBBLE RAGE - by PAKO, YUXUAN, LUUKAS & PABLO

The biggest booming bubble battle! An arcade game for two players, one creates bubbles from a canister and the other chews and blows gum. Match the size of the bubble with the target, and win! This game is made in Godot Engine.

This augmented drinking game investigates why grocery prices have inflated into unaffordable price-bubbles. With a barcode scanner as your controller, this game is perfect for getting drunk while lamenting capitalism with your friends. Made in HTML.

A game of willpower; you play in bubbly world where you can try to resist popping the bubbles! This game was created in Bitsy Engine.

Space Bug is a platformer where you need to jump over various bubbles and reach the sun! It’s made in Game Builder Garage for Nintendo Switch.


You can play some of these games in the upcoming edition of COLLIDERS next Thursday, 

 to be part of COLLIDERS community and receive a monthly newsletter.

GLOBAL GAME JAM 2025 (RECAP)



Here comes the last newsletter of the year, to wish you all beautiful holidays and announce a few dates for 2025.
The team of Sickhouse is incredibly proud and thankful for all the support it receive this year while being without a fixed home! While we were struggling to make space for our alternative ways of doing art, Sickhouse community, local partners and international playful friends made sure we could present, exchange, produce and that meant everything.

* We also especially want to thank our volunteers that followed us in the multiple location we hosted our program, that stayed enthusiastic and helpful, adapting all the time and making these places home for the community! THANK YOU! *

In this newsletter,

Look back on 2024, RADICAL JOY RESISTANCE

We wish you all beautiful celebration days, may you be with love ones and playful ones!


In 2024, with the theme RADICAL JOY RESISTANCE Sickhouse has been looking into the role of playfulness in movements of resistance.

 presented artists playing around with their hardware, questioning control, purposes and material. With 

Bearwarp - Silvia Binda Heiserova - Emilie Breslavetz - Leon Denise - Dorian Rigal - Vincent Schoutsen - Wouter van Veldhoven - Tijmen Zonnevijlle



Over the summer we invited artists to host LARP sessions 

 to engage in complex situations while taking on new roles. Designed by 



In September the interactive and performative installation 

, invited visitors and the local queer community to explore what their collective voice could express. Presented by 

.

In October, the immersive exhibition of 

 invited players to get lost and navigate, float, swim or dive in between all directions. Installation from 

Through this program we asked ourselves what or whom we are resisting and how we are integrating resistance in our lives, what spaces do we take, what shapes can it take… It brought us to places of weakness, intimacy, awkwardness, sadness, where play could almost always find room.

Empowered by this research we wanted 

 to be a moment to bring people together, a moment to rethink our way to take space, an event allowing planned but also spontaneous gathering to arise… The program has been set-up to showcase diverse testimony of resistance while giving the visitors tools to share their own stories.

From the performance with 

 to the March of resistance, the opening has been an incredible moment to recognise the power of play and the strength of this community.

Poetry is an important aspect that connected many moments of the festival, letting chosen words, random associations, foreign sentences give a certain lightness to our acts of resistance.

Addressing the role and the responsibilities of the game industry and art world in the violent context the society finds itself in, was also an important objective for our organisation. And the festival has been a way to step up and stand stronger.



Looking forward to start 2025 and plan the great move to our new location, we are happy, proud and thankful to share that Sickhouse will be supported by the 

De zeggingskracht en oorspronkelijkheid van het programma worden door de commissie hoog gewaardeerd. Het spreekt veel energie uit het voorstel. Het programma wordt door de commissie als voorbeeldstellend gezien voor de manier waarop de nieuwste generatie makers op een vanzelfsprekende manier eclectische programma’s samenstelt.

The committee highly values ​​the expressiveness and originality of the programme. It expresses a lot of energy in the proposal. The committee sees the programme as an example of the way in which the latest generation of makers naturally composes eclectic programmes.

"

quote from the Stimuleringsfonds committee review.

GOOD BYE 2024 (NEWSLETTER)

 is back! Are you a playful artist, a game maker or a creative coder based in Overijssel, looking for a community, mentors and material support? This is for you! 



 program from Sickhouse, supporting the making of an 

. You will get the support of professional mentors, visit exhibitions, join meet-ups and festivals and meet other professionals and studios from around the world. Every month you will organise a game night with your selection of playful projects, you will get the chance to present the progress of your work and collect feedback from different crowds. In November 2025, you will present your project at The Overkill festival.

SickProd was created to foster the game maker community of our region and create a chain of opportunities for local young talents within an international network.  
In 2023 we supported the development and release of 

, a narrative game from Shaman Garage, young studio from Enschede (NL) and Madrid (SP). Together we went to 

 in Hilversum and many other places. 

TO APPLY is super easy!



Add a portfolio (or some links), a CV and a motivation later.
If you have questions you can mail Marie at marie@sickhouse.nl or join our 

 channel to meet the community.

What we ask from you/ your studio :

- Being 

 for meetings, presentations, makers meet-up and excursions.
- 

 an interactive and playful project at The Overkill
- 

 the playful community of Enschede

What we give you access to :

- Professional support from playful curator Zuraida Buter and the Sickhouse team.
- Regular 

Test / Feedback sessions with diverse crowds


- A monthly fee of 250€ between February and November 2025
- 

 (tbd) to present the gaming experience in November at The Overkill festival 2025.
- Access to an 

The selection committee is led by Sickhouse co-directors Marie Janin and is constituted of Co-director Aike Lütkemöller, mentor Zuraida Buter and alumni and colliders coordinator Pablo San Gregorio. 
The committee is considering the playfulness of the work, the implication of the artist/maker in the local scene, the potential of development of the project.
The committee will study all the applications and discuss in a meeting the relevance of their 3 favourite choices, based on the criteria mentioned above. 
-----


News
Arcade Mayhem

News
The Overkill Festival '24 Aftermovie

News
GLOBAL GAME JAM 2025 (RECAP)

News
Theme 2025 : Return to Dreamland

News
GOOD BYE 2024 (NEWSLETTER)

News
SICKPROD OPEN CALL 2025

Upcoming Events

Gallery

NewsArcade Mayhem

NewsThe Overkill Festival '24 Aftermovie

NewsGLOBAL GAME JAM 2025 (RECAP)

NewsTheme 2025 : Return to Dreamland

NewsGOOD BYE 2024 (NEWSLETTER)

NewsSICKPROD OPEN CALL 2025