Please scroll down to find more detailed information about the larps.
FRIDAY 17:00
| Larp | Runtime | Participants | Designers | Content info | Accessibility info |
| Panopticon | 4 hours | 12-16 | Nór Hernø | imprisonment, control, dystopia, fast paced movement, heavy use of sound & light | Tehdassali (accessible), the larp requires fast paced movement |
| Rap Superstar | 4 hours | 12-28 | Lauri Lukka | loneliness, macho culture | Jokistudio (accessible) |
| Beyond the Barricades | 4 hours | 10 | Eva Wei, Rosalind Göthberg | death of loved ones, loud sounds | Puppet Studio (threshold at door) |
| Farewell to Earth | 4 hours | 6-12 | Maarit Neuvonen | physical touch (hands, arms, sholders and back), background music | LTA Studio (accessible) |
| 10 Birch Street | 30 min | 2 | Kaisa Mikkola, Aino Haavisto | Small, closed space. Loneliness. | Elevator (accessible) |
| Dirty Laundry | 3-4 hours | 4-6 | Holger Pick, Mo Holkar | Drugs, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity (in the background), death of a friend | 600 m walk to the location, 5 steps of stairs to the door, 5 steps of stairs into the apartment |
| Those Were Dark Times and Hare Paid the Price | 4 hours | 4-7 | Matko Radić | war crimes, death, torture, sexual violence. Pictures of real crimes and victims will be used. | TSL lecture hall (stairs to basement) |
| inside:outside | 4 hours | 10-20 | Emir Zeik (Eirik Fatland & Mike Pohjola) | violence, oppression, prison | Jojo Theatre (accessible) |
SATURDAY 11:00
| Larp | Runtime | Participants | Designers | Content info | Accessibility info |
| Westwind | 3-3,5 hours | 8-21 | Mo Holkar | ultra-capitalism, alienation, physical sickness and injury, societal oppression, non-verbal | Tehdassali (accessible) |
| Superconductivity | 2 h 15 min | 12-20 | Thomas Steenfeldt Nielsen (larp design), Kalle Hunnerup Jacobsen (voice recordings) | a few instances of bright, flashing lights, a few instances of loud sounds, modifications of communication | Jokistudio (accessible) |
| Debris Dreams | 4 hours | 14 | Ari Adamski & Sophie Allerding (design), Nina Runa Essendrop (mentoring) | non-verbal, territorial conflict, destruction of one’s home, memories | Puppet Studio (threshold at door) |
| Estranged | 3,5-4 hours | 6-12 | Maya Hindsberg | parental abuse, estrangement from parent | LTA Studio (accessible) |
| Fridge Poetry | 4 hours | 6-12 | Usva Inei, Hazel Anneke Dixon | loss of home | TSL lecture hall (stairs to basement) |
| Horga Dance | 4 hours | 8-20 | Eva Wei, Rosalind Göthberg | death of loved ones, violence, sex techniques, physical touch, periodically loud soundscapes, non-verbal | AB sali (accessible) |
| Glow | 4 hours | 8-12 | Niina Niskanen (larp design, written materials, soundscapes), Hanna Erkinjuntti (workshops, photos), Tiia Seeve (soundcapes) | death, pain, darkness, loud sounds, neutral physical touch (hands and face), painting with fingers, getting (water-soluble) paint on one’s skin | Jojo Theatre (accessible) |
| Unicorn Season | 4 hours | 6-9 | Pihla Lehtinen | heteronormativity, bioessentialist views on gender | AB aula (accessible) |
SATURDAY 17:00
| Larp | Runtime | Participants | Designers | Content info | Accessibility info |
| Faerie | 4 hours | 8-16 | Halfdan Keller Justesen | heavy themes may appear if participants so choose | Tehdassali (accessible) |
| Tiny Steps in Heaven | 3-3,5 hours | 10-16 | Tamara Nassar | loss, honouring the memory of the dead children of Gaza | Jokistudio (accessible) |
| Mobilized | 1 hour | 12-60 | Nea Landin & Gabriel Widing; sound design: Scott Cazan | LTA Studio (accessible) | |
| Women in Finland | 4-4,5 hours | 3 | Aino Haavisto | losing a child, alcoholism, war, sexism, heteronormativity | Tehdas bedroom (some thresholds?) |
| Heart of Darkness | 4,5-5 hours | 4-6 | Tuukka Tenhunen | racism, slavery, talk of atrocities, violence sexism, colonialism, heteronormativity | 600 m walk to the location, 5 steps of stairs to the door, 5 steps of stairs into the apartment |
| The Memoratorium: A Pleasant Place | 5 hours | 4-12 | Monica Hjort Traxl & Morten Greis Fakkelskolv | therapy, participants might bring in heavy topics, playing characters who have a fictional disability which makes you see objects instead of reading text (the experience in this larp might be different if you have aphantasia) | TSL lecture hall (stairs to basement) |
| Mind over Sight | 4 hours | 4-12 | Leland Masek, Daniel Fernández Galeote, Zoi Asterataki, Edward Rupper | indoctrination, gaslighting, re-education, state-kidnapping, public judgement, humiliation, rubbing skin-safe paint on one’s own blind-fold covered face. | AB sali (accessible) |
| Finding Tom | 5 hours | 6-16 | Vili Myrsky Nissinen, Nina Mutik | homosexual sex, wartime, discrimination, violence, oppression, feelings of shame and being ill | Jojo Theatre (accessible) |
10 BirCH STREET
Designers: Kaisa Mikkola & Aino Haavisto
Number of participants: 2
Duration: 30 minutes (several runs will be played during the slot)
Content info: Small, closed space. Loneliness.
Experience ten years of life’s ups and downs in 20 elevator journeys. Two neighbours only meet each other in the elevator but develop a close and meaningful connection. This is a feel-good larp about the significance of everyday encounters.
Beyond the Barricades
Designers: Eva Wei and Rosalind Göthberg
Number of participants: 10
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: death of loved ones, loud sounds
Beyond the Barricades is a theatrical and flamboyant scenario based on the historical events of the June rebellion in Paris 1832. Participants portray ten friends on a barricade. The larp explores how idealism and friendship bring them together and how doubt and unfairness tear them apart. Each character has to consider whether ideals are worth dying for or whether they will betray their beliefs to save themselves or someone they love.
DEBRIS DREAMS
Designers: Ari Adamski & Sophie Allerding, mentored by Nina Runa Essendrop
Number of participants: 14
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: non-verbal, territorial conflict, destruction of one’s home, memories
There is a dwelling — a precious place, rich with meaning. Within this place are two groups, each caring for it in different ways, locked in a territorial conflict. The ghosts preserve the memories of this place through their haunting and reflections on the past. The humans see this place as full of potential — a canvas for the future — and have come to build something new. Debris Dreams explores the interplay between these two forces — preserving the old and creating the new — the inevitable conflict, and the possibilities of transformation within their disagreements.
DIRTY laundry
Designers: Holger Pick and Mo Holkar
Number of participants: 4-6
Duration: 3-4 hours
Content info: Drug use and abuse, alcoholism, and sexual promiscuity are part of the background, but not necessary to play upon. Also there’s the death of a friend.
You were in a successful band together, twenty years ago. But then, things went horribly wrong between you. Now, the band’s been invited to reform for a reunion tour, for big money – but can you address and deal with the problems that caused you to split up?
Estranged
Designer: Maya Hindsberg
Number of participants: 6-12
Duration: 3.5-4 hours
Content info: parental abuse, estrangement from parent
“Mom, now you’re being unreasonable, you’re making me sad.”
Estranged is a story about how you get to the point where you have to make the choice about whether you want to cut ties with a parent or stay. It is a larp abot love and grief and about the ambivalence and relief that comes from breaking a relationship that is not healthy for you.
Faerie
Designers: Halfdan Keller Justesen
Number of participants: 8-16
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: heavy themes may appear if participants choose to include them in their stories
Faerie is a larp about malicious fairy tale creatures removed from the norms of human society, and bound to a tragic prophecy. As four mortals enter the realm of the Fae, they are torn apart and caught up in a chaotic whirlwind, the eternal dance, vastly outnumbered, and unable to find their way out unless they bargain. Will the prophecies be fulfilled or will the mortals find a way to deal with and circumvent their fate?
Farewell to Earth
Designers: Maarit Neuvonen
Number of participants: 6-12
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: physical touch (hands, arms, sholders and back), background music
Farewell to Earth is a story about a group of enthusiastic socialists from a fictitious country, embarking on a space journey to establish a socialist colony on a new planet. The larp touches themes of community, identity and exploration of the unknown.
Finding Tom
Designers: Vili Myrsky Nissinen & Nina Mutik
Number of participants: 6-16
Duration: 5 hours
Content info: homosexual sex, living in the time of war, discrimination, violence, oppression, feelings of shame and being ill
We invite you to a journey from darkness to light, to be the main character in a story about homosexual men in Helsinki. Come and find one of “Tom’s men” in yourself: unashamed, proud, sexy, and masculine, and experience a slice of Finnish homosexual history.
Although all the characters in the story are homosexual men, we welcome all bodies, genders, and sexualities to this journey. This larp is body positive and free from discrimination.
Fridge Poetry
Designers: Usva Inei & Hazel Anneke Dixon
Number of participants: 6-12
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: loss of home
In Fridge Poetry, characters have just lost their homes in a fire and have been relocated to live in shared housing. Althought the larp is set in the aftermath of a crisis, the atmosphere is hopeful: Fridge Poetry focuses on rebuilding a future together. The larp explores themes of home, safety, community, displacement, and uprootedness. Participants will portray family units (these could be housemates, polycules or couples with children) that now live together with other family groups in one space. Characters and family units will be workshopped together via poetry-based exercises (please note that participants do not need any experience with writing poetry!).
GLOW
(Photo: Hanna Erkinjuntti)
Designers: Niina Niskanen (larp design, written materials, soundscapes), Hanna Erkinjuntti (workshops, photos), Tiia Seeve (soundcapes)
Number of participants: 5-10
Duration: 3,5 hours
Content info: misogyny, death, pain, darkness, loud sounds, neutral physical touch (hands and face), painting with fingers, getting (water-soluble) paint on one’s skin
Happy young girls paint luminous clocks in a factory. Slowly the toxic paint turns from ethereal glow to fatal gnaw. The girls face three great enemies: ignorance, pain, and death.
The Radium Girls were girls and women working in radium clock factories in the US in 1920’s. The dangers of radium were not yet fully understood. The girls were instructed to wet their paint brushes in their mouth. They ate in the work studio, and they painted themselves radiant for parties. They wore no protective equipment.
In Glow, you play Radium Girls: in the beginning happy, hopeful about the future and well paid, later seriously ill and in debt, fighting for their rights to treatment and life. The larp is inspired by Kate Moore’s book The Radium Girls.
Heart Of darkness
Designers: Tuukka Tenhunen
Number of participants: 4-6
Duration: 4.5-5 hours
Content info: racism, slavery, talk of atrocities and violence, heteronormative relationships, “traditional” gender norms, colonialism, “white man’s burden”, violence.
Heart of Darkness is a larp about lies people want to believe when the truth is too uncomfortable. It explores how banal motivations – mostly money – make people take part in genocide. It is about one of the worst slave states in human history.
Heart of Darkness is the story of two young officers who have returned to Belgium in 1902 after serving in the security apparatus of Congo Free State. During a dinner party, they tell stories about their exploits in Congo. The stories are complete fabrications as the reality is much, much worse. Play alternates between dinner scenes and flashbacks to Congo Free State.
No historical knowledge of Congo Free State (nor Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness) is required. The larp will begin with a short briefing in the subject. We are aiming for historical plausibility and respectful take on the suffering of the victims, but every detail doesn’t need to be accurate.
Horga Dance
Designers: Eva Wei and Rosalind Göthberg
Number of participants: 8-20
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: death of loved ones, violence, sex techniques, physical touch, periodically loud soundscapes
“The Fiddler pulled the fiddle from its case and lifted the bow towards the dawning Sunday sun as the people of Horga got excited and forgot about God and the whole world…”
The Horga legend is a traditional Swedish folktale and a song about how the devil, disguised as a fiddler, got all the youth in the Horga village to dance themselves to death. This is a story about possession, virtue and sin, following your deepest desires and facing what you’ve done while being under the devil’s spell.
“…hold back your bow, you fiddler, before we dance away our life and soul and bones! But he will not stop his dance until we all have fallen down dead.”
inside:Outside
Designers: Emir Zeik (Eirik Fatland & Mike Pohjola)
Number of participants: 10-20
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: violence, oppression, prison
A bunch of strangers wake up in a white cube, not knowing how or why. They are all prisoners, wearing white, numbered overalls. A voice calls them by numbers, one at a time, to the next room. In the other room, another voice accuses them of unspecified crimes, holds philosophical monologues, and forces them to confront ethical dilemmas. Then the prisoner is returned with the others. At random times, or if the prisoners are difficult, guards enter the cell and beat up the prisoners.
This Nordic larp classic explores game theoretic ideas of The Prisoner’s Dilemma and Wolf’s Dilemma. It has been influenced by writings of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the films A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Cube (1997).
The Memoratorium – A Pleasant Place
Designers: Monica Hjort Traxl & Morten Greis Fakkelskolv
Number of participants: 4-12
Duration: 5 hours
Content info: therapy (participants might bring in rough topics), playing characters who have a fictional disability which makes you see objects instead of reading text (the experience in this larp might be different if you have aphantasia)
You play patients who suffer from Literary Synesthesia (a fictional disease) that can be cured by exposing the patient to the Memoratorium. Literary synesthesia is a mental illness where what is read becomes what is seen. The patient does not read the word [motorcycle], but instead sees a motorcycle. The patients also suffer from amnesia. Their condition is due to a past traumatic event.
During the larp, the participants create their own story, invent a trauma, and challenge the story. The Memoratory is an interactive space where your character’s story is refined and lived out. The workshop, the unusual setting and references to synesthesia, personal sensation and visual stimuli are some of the components found in this strange place. This is a visual immersive scenario without preparation, without intrigue, without stagnation.
Mind over Sight: The Fable of a Parent State
Designers: Leland Masek, Daniel Fernández Galeote, Zoi Asterataki & Edward Rupper
Number of participants: 4-12
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: Indoctrination, gaslighting, re-education, state-kidnapping, public judgment, humiliation, rubbing skin-safe paint on one’s own face. Death is a theme within stories told, though no violence occurs in the larp.
Mind over Sight: The Fable of a Parent-State explores the tensions and intricacies of parenting within a totalitarian regime. Players will be parents or children who face moral lessons taught through fable-like tales. Children will be blindfolded and taught how to thrive in this totalitarian society and players will navigate the moral and emotional choices between doing as society deems correct and what personally seems right.
Mind over Sight is made by the Games As Art Center.
Mobilized: an essay pretending to be a game
Designers: Nea Landin & Gabriel Widing; sound design: Scott Cazan
Number of participants: 12-60
Duration: 1 hour
Content info:
“Some would say that we have already completed a forbidden experiment, using ourselves as subjects with no controls, and the unhappy findings are in: we are connected as we’ve never been before, and we seem to have damaged ourselves in the process.” – Sherry Turkle in Alone Together
This scenario explores power, mobile use, social media, avatar bodies and collective movement. The participant’s bodies and imaginations shape a kind of choreography as their phones guide them through the constructed reality of the game. It is also an experiment of lowering the tresholds of participation by giving over some of the responsibilities at play to algorithms, chance and technology. At times it might remind you more of an anonymous chat room or a weird MMO than a larp.
No prior knowledge required, just your charged smartphone!
Mobilized: An Essay Pretending to Be a Game has been supported by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, DansPlats Skog, Site Sweden, Inter Arts Center, and Nyxxx.
Panopticon
Designers: Nór Hernø
Number of participants: 12-16
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: imprisonment, control, dystopian society, fast paced movement, heavy use of sound & light
In the Panopticon prison, you live under constant surveillance until a glitch disrupts the system, offering brief moments of freedom. Seizing these outages, you can navigate between cells to reconnect with people from your past but must return before power is restored. In the end you will make one final decision that will determine your fate and potentially the fate of those around you.
Participation requires a level of physical mobility, as fast-paced movement is necessary during the larp, as well as being comfortable with heavy use of sound and light.
RAp superstar
Designers: Lauri Lukka
Number of participants: 12-28
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: loneliness, macho culture
Rap Superstar is about the struggle to the top – and how this struggle eventually leads to loneliness. The characters start as a group of young rap heads, but one by one, their passion becomes less important as their lives start to involve more mundane and boring things. Only one person will be the rap superstar! The larp involves penning rhymes, tagging, and rapping/rhyming.
Superconductivity
Designers: Thomas Steenfeldt Nielsen (larp design), Kalle Hunnerup Jacobsen (voice recordings)
Number of participants: 12-20
Duration: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Content info: a few instances of bright, flashing lights, a few instances of loud sounds
The atoms in a piece of iron sit tightly in perfect order with great discipline. But between them, electrons can move and dance, make friends and foes, and experience hope and bitterness. In this larp, we explore the strange but so very human lives of electrons as they are poked and prodded by The Experimenter.
Through movement and with a few words, we tell the stories of electrons as they exchange joy, fear, energy, and momentum in the borderland between being individuals and a collective. And perhaps we will find the ultimate, frictionless freedom that is superconductivity.
Those Were Dark Times and Hare Paid the Price
Designers: Matko Radić
Number of participants: 4-7
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: war, loss of loved ones, war crimes, torture, executions, physical, gender-based and sexual violence, nationalism, ethnic conflict, trauma. Pictures of real crimes and victims will be used.
Step into a war-torn city where justice is elusive and the sense of good and bad is lost.Participants become soldiers grappling with their roles in wartime atrocities. Under police interrogation, they must decide — hide behind lies or face the truth — as the city boils with fear and hatred.
This is a story about the corrosive effects of evil, the crushing weight of responsibility, and the struggle for national identity in a time of chaos. It examines how individuals respond to extreme pressures: do they succumb to the environment of hatred and revenge, or do they find the strength to question their choices and resist? Through the lens of deeply flawed and morally compromised characters, the narrative explores the dark corners of human behavior, where retribution often masquerades as justice and the boundaries of identity blur under the weight of war. The larp is based on real events during the Croatian Homeland War (1991-1995).
Tiny steps in Heaven
Designers: Tamara Nassar
Number of participants: 10-16
Duration: 3-3.5 hours
Content info: loss, honouring the memory of the dead children of Gaza
The Palestinian larp Tiny Steps in Heaven is the winner of the Echoes of the Innocent larp design competition of the Palestinian larp organization Beyt Byout about Gaza.
For the living, the place is Gaza sometime between 7th October 2023 and 1st January 2025. Yet where we are now, the concept of time does not exist. The Stairway to Heaven is an ethereal space between Earth and Heaven. Along the stairway, the environment shifts and changes based on memories and dreams. There are resting points where the spirits gather to share their stories. As they ascend the staircase, they reflect on their lives, connect, and find peace. As players embody the spirits of the children of Gaza who tragically lost their lives far too soon in the war, they explore feelings of loss, remembrance, and connection.
Embark on this journey of remembrance so that we won’t forget the names of the children of Gaza nor that they were not just numbers or statistics, creating a collective memory that honors their lives and the dreams they held dear.
Unicorn season
Designers: Pihla Lehtinen
Number of participants: 6-9
Duration: 4 hours
Content info: heteronormativity, bioessentialist views on gender
Unicorn Season is a tragicomedy about how heteronormativity ruins everything – including polyamorous dating. Telling a story of three times three people on a date, this larp uses magical (sur)realism and comedy to reflect on serious themes.
Unicorn Season makes fun of a phenomenom called unicorn hunting, which tends to fetishize bisexual women, have bioessentialist views on gender and generally be annoingly heteronormative. You might need to play a character with a different gender than your own.
Westwind
(Image: Vasilisa)
Designers: Mo Holkar
Number of participants: 8-21
Duration: 3-3.5 hours
Content info: ultra-capitalism, alienation, physical sickness and injury, societal oppression
Westwind is a non-verbal larp set in a retro-near-future of economic depression and hardship, in which citizens struggle through atomized lives of meaningless daily toil, under a remote ruler. But the ruler has a servant, Westwind, who moves secretly among the people, disguised as one of them. And at the end of each day, Westwind reports to the ruler all of the acts of kindness and generosity that they have witnessed being performed – so that those people can be rewarded accordingly.
The intended experience is one of a gradual transition from despair to hope, and from loneliness to community. A recognition that while all are suffering, the burden can be reduced if it is shared.
The central notion of Westwind comes from the short story of the same name, by Gene Wolfe (1973).
women in finland
Designers: Aino Haavisto
Number of participants: 3
Duration: 4-4.5 hours
Content info: losing a child, alcoholism of a parent, war, discrimination against women, discrimination against queer people
In Women in Finland you will experience the state of the Finnish feminist struggle during the last 100 years. You will dive down in five very different times and meet three very different women each time.
In every generation, the fight for gender equality goes on. No matter what victories we build upon, there is constantly a new glass ceiling to break through; there is always another sexist, misogynist or patriarchal structure that needs to be challenged. However, most of all we need to conquer our own expectations and misgivings.
The larp is a localized version of Women by Susanne Gräslund & Anders Hultman. Women in Finland takes the originally Swedish story to Finland – a country that has experienced wars in the 20th century and where many steps forward were taken 30 years later than in Sweden.
All characters are women but anyone regardless of their gender is welcome to participate.