Make It in Brooklyn: A Play Jam & Showcase Recap 

Brooklyn is serious about games. That was the message and the energy  at the Make It in Brooklyn Play Jam & Showcase, which brought together the first cohort of the NYU Tandon Game Design Future Lab (GDFL) alongside teams from the NYU Game Center Incubator for a check-in at the six-month mark. Held at the recently reopened small business,  WC Art & IPRC at 351 Jay Street, the evening felt creative, community-driven, and attended by people who are genuinely building something. 

DBP President, Regina Myer, Sayar Lonial from NYU Tandon, and NYCEDC’s Jonathan Schulhof, kicked off the event, underscoring the city’s growing commitment to games as a creative and economic force. Dr. Mitu Khandaker, who leads GDFL, put it plainly: the game industry is harder to break into than ever, and the program exists to meet founders exactly where they are — no single mold, no assumption that venture funding is the only path. Weekly mentorship, workshops, shared office space across the street at 370 Jay, and a cohort trip to GDC have formed the backbone of a program that, as founder after founder made clear, has become something they genuinely lean on. 

Six Months In 

What came through in every presentation was how much GDC changed things. For studios that described themselves as “weird punk people” not used to selling in rooms, or as solo founders who needed someone to keep them focused, or as a remote team that didn’t know how much they needed to be in the same room — the combination of community, mentorship, and being thrown into the deep end at one of the industry’s biggest conferences accelerated things in ways that are hard to fully quantify. 

CYBRLICH Studios used it to sharpen their pitch and validate their momentum. Munity Games made connections with potential angels and buyers that gave them crucial social proof. Sapient Technology hosted a customer pipeline dinner and closed additional capital. Made in Brooklyn Games met Meta contacts who opened new roads to contracts. And Remixing Reality’s Ortega found himself, somewhat accidentally, face-to-face with the person described as “the king of IP licensing” — a meeting now potentially leading to a slot at Google I/O. 

The NYU Game Center Incubator teams, with over a decade of history behind the program, rounded out the evening — their games available to play throughout the space, a reminder that this wasn’t a pitch night so much as a gathering of people who love what they make and want to share it. 

The room itself added something too. There’s a particular kind of inspiration that comes from being surrounded by the raw materials of other people’s creativity, and WC Art & IPRC, with its shelves of paints, papers, and supplies, delivered exactly that. It was the right backdrop for a night about building things. Good sandwiches from Fresh Grocer didn’t hurt either. 

Game Design Future Lab Studios 

 CYBRLICH Studios is making Death Cult of Labor — think Doom, but you’re Conan the barbarian fighting your way up a cyberpunk office tower to kill your evil CEO boss. It’s absurd, it’s stylish, and people are already obsessed: nearly 30,000 Steam wishlists, the top post of all time on r/indiegames, and a Polygon shoutout as the first great game of GDC — all without a public demo, and all while working part-time with no outside funding. 

Munity Games is a worker-owned co-op building Sheeplander, a fast-paced 2D arcade heist game that can only be experienced in person — loud, kinetic, the kind of thing that draws a crowd. They’ve shipped local co-op, added a new character, and are mid-way through a major art overhaul. 

Sapient Technology is building an AI-native development platform that lives inside the game engine — designed to help studios of every size design, build, and debug faster. Co-founder Kobra Wise presented via video, having just welcomed a baby girl into the world. 

Made in Brooklyn Games works at the intersection of XR, web development, and New York City storytelling — and comes with receipts: the studio is a winner of last year’s Make It in Brooklyn pitch contest, making their place in this cohort feel like a natural next chapter. Studio founder Hessvacio is a professor by day and is now weaving game mechanics into how he teaches web development to his students. 

Remixing Reality is an AR platform that lets you layer meaningful content — memories, memes, fan moments — directly into the physical world through your phone, with a path toward smart glasses already in motion. Founder Tom Ortega is a one-person band with very large plans. 

Make It in Brooklyn is dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship and supporting Brooklyn’s innovation ecosystem through its series of pitch contests, meet-ups, and panels. These initiatives have united hundreds of entrepreneurs and provided over $200K in seed funding, along with invaluable pro-bono professional services.