After a winter break, the TableTop Game Nights are back!

We'll have 2 game nights per month, on Friday or Saturday. Come and play everything that can be played on a table: RPGs, board games, folk games, D&D, and so on.

+ We'll always have RPG tables, hosted by a member of our community or by a special guest, as well as board games tables.
+ Come alone or in group. Gaming is a great way to make new friends ;)
+ Bring your favorite games to share them with us or discover new games from our collection.
+ 

if you would like to be a game master!
+ or 

 if you want to come and play (by letting us know you are coming, we can prepare the place in advance and save a place for you at the table of your choice).

DATE: Friday 28 of March
TIME: 19:00-23:00
PLACE: GrensFrequentie, Willem Wilminkplein 1, 7511 JE Enschede
FREE ADMISSION

TableTop Game Night

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.

On Sunday 30th March we will DreamWalk around the Twente Airport. During this walk we’ll immerse ourselves into childhood dreams and think how and why do they change in time, but also how it feels to be reminded of them when we’re grown ups.
In this role playing experience we’ll play a group children making kites, paper airplanes, running around and dreaming. In the following scenes we’ll get older and see how our dreams transform as we meet every five years on the same spot over the course of 40 years. We’ll land it with becoming a choir and singing an ode to dreaming and friendships in a place with a fantastic acoustics.

As a part of the experience, you’ll receive a DreamJournal — a growing collection of pages with questions that help you create Dreamwalking experience and process it.


If you’ve been to a previous Dreamwalk, please, bring your journal with you — you’ll receive new pages for it.

 (Make sure to get your on time, the number of spot available is limited)
You will receive an e-mail a few days before the walk with all the info and instructions.


🕐 Meeting time: 13:00
⛲ Meeting place : 

(event entrance) or bike together with Jana, starting at 12:15 from the 

 in the city center.
⏱️ Duration:  4 hours
💰 

 : €6 (including drinks and cookies)
🧣 Material to bring : Warm clothes and good shoes, 

headphones and have your phone connected to internet

 to play music from a list that we’ll send beforehand (it will be also possible to upload the playlist)

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.

Dream Walk #2 Flying Field - 30/03

DreamWalk #2 Flying Field

COLLIDERS is an our monthly meet-up for playful makers, welcoming any creative, regardless of the engine they are working in. At Colliders we brainstorm, present our progress, give feedback, enjoy creations and, of course, we play!

Colliders purpose is to develop a local network for the indie / arthouse / serious game industry in the east of the Netherlands. With Colliders, we want to support each other and create more opportunities for collaborations and exchange. The meet ups are open to makers, enthusiasts, producers, artists, curators, and all people interested in game making.

In April the theme for the game selection is 

looking into the innate playfulness of game makers, hiding secrets that do not necessarily need to be found... We will be joined by Koos van der Lecq who presents the progress of her new research.

With 

Colliders Game Makers Meet-up 1004

The Athens Porn Film Festival takes you into a dream world that is sometimes sweet and sometimes bitter but always tasty. From gentle lovers to magical creatures, from clear blue skies to dark dungeons, get ready for a bumpy night!

 

Satyrs and Maeands: the Athens porn film festiva

 (2023) Dir. Mahx Capacity USA 07:50 (no language)
3. 

 (2023) Dir. Johan Debo POLAND 04:40 (no language)
4.

 (2023) Dir. Lovelight BRAZIL 08:22 (portuguese with eng subs)
5. 

 (2023) Dir. Finn Darrell USA 04:48 (no language)
6. 

 (2024) Dir. Sai Jaiden Lillith AUSTRALIA 05:06 (english with eng subs)
7. 

 (2023) Dir. RTALIN GER 03:35(no dialogue)
8. 

 (2021) Dir. Nicky Miller GER 04:12 (french with eng subs)
9.  tbc

WHEN: Friday 18th April
WHERE: Concordia Cinema , Oude Markt 15
TIME: 23:45-01:00 
FEE : €8 (tickets via concordia soon)

Sick&Sexy - Wet Dreams and Sweet Nightmares

: a backstrap weaving tutorial + body-machine meditation, facilitated by Afra Willems and Yari Rabadán. 

This session invites participants to explore technology from a broad perspective and discuss its political implications, with the body as an original machine. In celebration of Enschede’s 700th anniversary, we’ll delve into the city’s textile past, presenting textile arts as a high-tech medium, from ancient to contemporary technologies seamlessly.

We’ll explore weaving as the origins of coding and pattern generation. During the workshop, participants will create their own backstrap weaving loom—a simple yet ingenious device where the human weaver is an integral part of the loom. Where a fixed loom can stand alone in a room, the backstrap loom only exists when the weaver wears it. By attaching their body to the loose collection of sticks and yarn, the weaver transforms the backstrap loom into and intimate tool. By the end of the session, participants will know how to use the loom to produce fabric.

The workshop consists of several phases: 1) arranging the sticks, 2) warping the loom, 3) attaching the heddle yarn, 4) weaving the backstrap and 5) finishing up/weaving in ends. In each phase, a different question will guide the discussion.

The workshop is free for participants under registration. There are 12 spots available,

WHEN: Wednesday, April 23
WHERE: B93, Hoge Bothofstraat 166, 7511 ZE Enschede
TIME: 18:30-21:00 (the workshop counts with five stages, so it's important to start on time)

Human in the Loop: waving workshop + body-machine meditation

In our third DreamWalk we’ll look into our dreams of better futures and world.

We’ll take on roles of Dreamers — beings that are creating worlds while dreaming. Their goal is to create one that they finally alll like and want to live in. But it doesn’t always go so smoothly. Usually they just erase the universe they created to start from a scratch, like this time. But a strange mistake has happen — everything disappeared except of a random parking lot. Dreamers gather there to fix it, but it seems that now a new world has to be created around this parking lot and blend in organically, as if it has always been there.

Expect a light-hearted collective world-building larp and arrive dressed to be as natural as possible at the parking lot, to avoid any further mistakes in the system.

Beware this event is in a public space in the city, you may encounter "non dreamers" and parking lot security. 

(more info soon)

In order to join the walk, you need a 

🕐 Meeting time: 18:00
⛲ Meeting place : tba
⏱️ Duration: 4 hours
💰 

 : €6 (including drinks and cookies)
🧣 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.

DreamWalk #3 a Parking Spot - 24/04

DreamWalk #3 A Parking Spot

, is an interactive sound workshop. Looking for the sounds and rumors of the middle age, this experiment is an invitation to imagine the gossip, the voices and the songs floating around the rooms of the museum.

Together we will collect characters, imagine sounds and play with the sounds together, live as performers and recorded as an interactive visual.

The workshop is part of RMT Next a program from the museum created to welcome young public from 19.00 to 22.00. With music, tour and activities through the museum. 


🎛️ Location : Rijksmuseum Twenthe
🎙️ Date : 27-03-2025 
🕐 Time : 20:45
⏱️ Duration : 45min
💬 for 15  participants
💰 

Gossip Choir Collage

It' time for The Ultimate IndieMash Game Contest! For the third time, indie-game makers from all over the world get to present their projects to an international audience, play interactive games together and have the chance to win a spot at The Overkill Festival 2025!



 : 30th MARCH
ULTIMATE INDIEMASH SHOW : 24th MAY



 is a contest for unique playful makers of the world, to present their work to an international audience. Hosted live from Bristol, UK and Enschede, NL, and streamed all over the world, the participants get three minutes each to show their game, interactive project, immersive installation or playful performance, through an online video connection. So you don’t have to travel to participate!

The evening is for them to share their concepts and gain new fans, and at the end of the program, the viewers and a jury of professionals will vote for their favourite project. Besides receiving the Sickest Trophy, the winner of the Ultimate IndieMash will also get a spot at The Overkill Festival 2025!



Not only are we looking for the most original, extravagant and alternative playful concepts, the 

 is also a celebration of diversity within the indie-game community. We welcome applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in the gaming world. From coding mothers to queer visual artists and indigenous storytellers, everyone is invited to show their unique project and creations to our audience online!


 is a two-hour online program, filled with music, playful interactions and of course the gamemakers and their projects. In the first hour, the participants show their work in a 3 minute presentation, that can be as playful as you want! They will get a chance to answer some questions from the audience as well, to explain their projects as well as possible. In the second hour, the participants together with the audience will play some exciting games in which the audience creates prompts, drawings and more for the participants to be creative with. After that, the audience and the jury will vote for their favorite project, and at the end of the show the winner will be announced.



- Open call-deadline for participants is the 

. 
Afterwards, the Sickhouse team will make a selection of 10 participants to present their projects.
- Selection announced on the 

If you have any questions regarding this program, don’t hesitate to email 

The Ultimate IndieMash Open Call!

SICKHOUSE is a PLAYFUL ART SPACE presenting games, interactive art and participatory projects to look critically into the (digital) transformation of our society! 

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 

at BlackBrick.

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)

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



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.

News
The Ultimate IndieMash Open Call!

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)

Upcoming Events

Gallery

NewsThe Ultimate IndieMash Open Call!

NewsArcade Mayhem

NewsThe Overkill Festival '24 Aftermovie

NewsGLOBAL GAME JAM 2025 (RECAP)

NewsTheme 2025 : Return to Dreamland

NewsGOOD BYE 2024 (NEWSLETTER)