Experiments in Digital Storytelling
Tethering: An Arcade with Deep Soul Ties
CultureHub NYC
47 Great Jones Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10012
November 12–13 & 19–20, 2026
Thursday & Friday, 6–9pm ET
Tickets: Sliding Scale Starting at $10
Join us at the CultureHub studio for four evenings of games and play!
Tethering explores the often invisible bonds that feed our souls. Players enter worlds that are animated by inner lives, musical expression, and ever-present spirits. The pursuit of connection across time, space, and planes of existence, prompts transformation, proposing new ways of listening, relating, and playing.
The arcade will be open Thursdays and Fridays, Nov 12—20, from 6-9pm. Drop by anytime.
Games in the arcade:
Adapter Story by Ada Interactive
Smush Bois by BƱCKET MEGASYSTEMS
Bub by Case Jernigan & Todd Anderson
Young Cathedral by Common Opera
The Poppy Grower by Everest Pipkin
Wild Chorus by Habitat Games
Engine Angel by Ivy Road Games
Extraordinary Departures by Mengna Da
Grove of the Felled Olives by Nicolas Oueijan
Thursday, November 12th:
6-9pm, Arcade Opening
Come and play games and meet the artists!
Friday, November 13th:
6-9pm, Arcade Open
7pm, Screenings of short film works
Alice, Bob, Carol and David by Viktor Timofeev
Extraordinary Encounters by Mengna Da
SLAY THE GOBLIN!! by Cameron Granger
Rat237 by Alex Declino & Rasmus Svensson
Thursday, November 19th:
6-9pm, Arcade Open
7pm, Interactive and Multi-Player Games
I Want to See You by Jordan Jones-Brewster
Smush Bois Tournament with Blake Andrews of BƱCKET MEGASYSTEMS
Friday, November 20th:
6-9pm, Arcade Open
7pm, Performances
Co-Operator by Ada Interactive
Relational Dance Dance by Jackie Liu
InfiniteMother_v2.0 by Pearlyn Lii
Refreshments available. Become a CultureHub member and receive a free drink anytime you come to one of our events! Student discount available with code “student.” If you are experiencing financial hardship, request a free ticket by emailing info@culturehub.org.
Curated collaboratively by Temitope Olujobi and the CultureHub Team
GAMES IN THE ARCADE
Adaptor Story by Ada Interactive
An adventure game where you play as Jack, who, upon finding out he was adapted at birth, decides to go on a journey of self discovery.
Bub by Todd Anderson & Case Jernigan
A single player narrative adventure game about turning your memories into art while you still can.
Engine Angel by Ivy Road
A sexy and violent car combat arcade action game where you play as a rally car driven by human & angel, fueled by their love.
Grove of the Felled Olives by Nicolas Oueijan
A virtual memorial dedicated to the over 60,000 humans killed in Gaza between Oct '23 and July '25. Pay respects to each of the departed in a peaceful refuge for their memory.
The Poppy Grower by Everest Pipkin
A a farm management sim and journaling game where you play an agricultural worker farming poppies alone on an asteroid. Told entirely through the interface of the proprietary operating system on asteroid, The Poppy Grower is that is played in the actions of using your computer every day and documented in the shipping manifests.
Extraordinary Departure by Mengna Da
A personal essay game about a little alien – a queer immigrant – wandering through a new world, rediscovering lost connections, and finding freedom.
Wild Chorus by Habitat Games
A hand-illustrated musical exploration game where you charm Sound Sprites and protect them from Silence, combine them into Melodies and fix the world (and the soundtrack), in whatever way you choose.
Young Cathedral by Common Opera
An emotional rhythm game for the 21st century. Perform your body in joy and sorrow through the changing of the seasons. Hello, my falling star; hello, my rising star.
Friday, Nov 13th At 7PM ET
Screening
Alice, Bob, Carol and David by Viktor Timofeev
A short film made within a game-engine that uses game mechanics, chance operations, and environmental props as elements of a theater production, set within an algorithmically dramatic mise-en-scène. Recorded using a virtual overhead camera, it treats the digital environment as a stage on which four protagonists enact an interdependent choreographic loop.
Extraordinary Encounters by Mengna Da
This personal essay follows a queer Chinese, a “resident alien” in the U.S., seeking to reconnect with her parents after coming out. Through intimate conversations and a blend of Motion Capture and 3D Gaussian Splatting, the artist stages herself as an alien revisiting the different places she calls home. It is a counterpart of the artist’s game, Extraordinary Departure. Additional Credits: Music: Iris Fernandez Valdes, Sound design: Alaine Farin
Rat 237 by Alex Declino & Rasmus Svensson
The doomsday clock ticks to midnight. All social systems meltdown. Large parts of the world regress to a medieval social structure – while retaining and developing many of the technological systems of the early 21th century. The level 4 autonomous being tasked to find The Solution(TM) to the problem, goes rogue. After simmering in 7.7 petabytes of Mr. Beast content, the AI christen himself Jimmy9, and begins hosting grotesquely cruel, but fair, game shows for his empire of rats. 93 years after the catastrophe Rat237 travels to one of Jimmy9’s pocket worlds. The pursuit for the ultimate prize (a never seen before level of Unaltered Psychotic Freedom) begins.
SLAY THE GOBLIN!! by Cameron Granger
Filmed entirely inside of the 2006 video game "The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion", and inspired by Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of The Earth" SLAY THE GOBLIN!! tells the story of a newly appointed soldier tasked with quelling a Goblin Uprising.
THURSDAY, NOV 19TH AT 7PM ET
MULTI-PLAYER GAMES
I Want To See You by Jordan Jones-Brewster
A 4-player card game that takes a playful look at the relationship between streaming content creators and their audiences.
Smush Bois Tournament with BƱCKET MEGASYSTEMS
In Smush Bois, you smush sentient malformed fruits, goblins, and frogs in a psychedelic & fast paced multiplayer platformer fighting game.
FRIDAY, NOV 20TH AT 7PM ET
PERFORMANCES
Relational Dance Dance by Jackie Liu
Relational Dance Dance (RDD) is a work-in-progress interactive memoir that remakes and breaks a dance rhythm game (e.g. Dance Dance Revolution) to explore body-memories, relational healing, and stepping into new patterns. Dance to original songs representing anxious coping mechanisms, and unlock a poetic ending where a new dance can be learned.
InfiniteMother_v2.0 by Pearlyn Lii (feat. Ṭaüs al Chalabi)
The second episode of Infinite Mother, a series of cutscenes as film exploring the mother wound through ancient mythos in a video-game world. In an underworld grotto modeled after Chinese mountain-water landscapes, Mother and Daughter orbit the Fetal Peach, a fruit-like mirage of their fractured ideals of care, until both dissolve into it. This live performance features Ṭaüs al Chalabi as Voice of Mother and Pearlyn Lii as Voice of Daughter.
Co-Operator by Ada Interactive
An interactive performance of Co-Operator, a social sequencer that lets you make music with friends or strangers. Runs in any browser on phone, desktop, tablet, smart fridge etc. Additional credits: Hahahaudio, Ada Babar, Chris Yonker, Casey B, Falcon