Playground at Animest.21: Homegrown Gamedev Levels Up in a Showcase of Romanian Video Games

Designed as a meeting point for creative communities and industries, Animest Hub turns CINETic and Instituto Cervantes into bridges for connection between animation, gamedev and professional training during the festival, specifically October 3-10, 2026. The Animest Hub project is co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB – The Cultural Center of Bucharest under the București în premieră 2026 program. This year, ARCUB celebrates 30 years of projects that have shaped Bucharest's cultural scene. For detailed information about the Bucharest City Hall's funding program through ARCUB, visit www.arcub.ro.

This edition of the Animest International Animation Festival introduces a brand-new section: Playground, a non-competitive pilot selection of video games developed in Romania. Curated by Filip Mănișor, the section spotlights the defining roles that auteur animation, visual language and storytelling play in the world of contemporary games. For a whole week, you can drop by CINETic to play, free of charge, seven games that capture the dynamism of the local gamedev scene, from internationally famous indies to student projects.

Internationally Acclaimed Indie Games

The three productions from professional studios we’re featuring were selected with the support of the RGDA (Romanian Game Developers Association):

• Unbound: Worlds Apart (Alien Pixel Studios): a critically acclaimed dark fantasy puzzle-platformer, hand-drawn and funded through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, in which players use magic portals to hop between parallel worlds.

• Near-Mage (Stuck in the Attic): an enchanting narrative adventure rooted in Transylvanian folklore and atmosphere, animated frame by frame by the team behind the international hit Gibbous.

• Gospodar's Tales (Gospodar Games / Street Art Studios): a daring psychological horror experiment set in a traditional Romanian village, drawing directly on Romanian literature classics Liviu Rebreanu, Marin Preda, and Ioan Slavici.

The New Developers: Academic Innovation and Young Debuts

Animest’s new gamedev Playground will also showcase the creativity of young developers through three prototypes created through UNATC's Art of Game Design Master's program:

• Buba’s Place: a cooking simulator with a warm, nostalgic atmosphere.

• The Fall of PNEUMA: a gothic action game featuring pixel-art aesthetics.

• Haunted Vlogs: an urban narrative mystery game.

Rounding off this diverse selection is Seeds for the Road, an interactive 3D exploration experience developed collaboratively by 13 high school students from The Animation Incubator community, under the coordination and mentorship of Ana Spiru.

Artist Talk with Ioana Șopov: The Secrets Behind Bear and Breakfast

This year, we’re strengthening the connection between classic animation and interactive art through a special event at Instituto Cervantes on Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Visual artist and illustrator Ioana Șopov will join us for an open conversation about the process of shaping the art direction of the celebrated game Bear and Breakfast (Gummy Cat / Armor Games). Ioana will share her unique take on the visual creation process, on adapting her illustration style to the demands of a cozy management game, and on what made this production born of an independent Bucharest studio into an international success.

Dive into full details on the Playground section on the Animest website, here.

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The Animest Hub project is co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB under the București în premieră 2026 program.

The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the Bucharest City Hall or ARCUB.