Portugal Makes Games? #3

There aren’t many gaming adjacent events happening in Portugal, but when there are, they apparently happen all at once.

SINFO, “the biggest free tech conference in Portugal”, took place this week, between the 20th and the 24th of April 2026. It unfolded in the beautiful Técnico Innovation Center in the heart of Lisbon.

While SINFO is an event mainly focused on tech in a more general sense, it always features a today entirely dedicated to videogames. This year we had a crew of heavy hitters in the keynote speakers:

• Zoë Sams, 2XKO’s Engineering Lead at RIOT Games, spoke about “Empathy in Game Development”, a topic that keeps getting more relevant as time goes on.

• Grant Jackson, Lead Game Designer at Naughty Dog. brought us a curiously titled conversation “Four Coins: Lessons in Contradiction from a Career in Game Design.”

• Jonathan Ye, Lead Level Designer at Infinity Ward, closed the Main Stage on Wednesday by talking about “How to Break Into The Game Industry as a Level Designer”.

This free event is always an excellent opportunity for networking and to have a chat with accomplished people in the gaming industry.

As I covered in the previous edition of Portugal Makes Games?, Codfish Game Clinic took place on the 24th of April 2026, yesterday at the time of writing. This event, (hopefully) the first of many, was organized by Codfish Academy with the help of Dear Villagers.

Guillaume Ancelin, Senior Product Manager at the publisher, came to Óbidos, a beautiful medieval town, to have 1-on-1 chats with 5 indie studios looking for guidance with their pitches.

The solo developers and small studios had one hour each to pitch their game to Ancelin, a much longer time-window than is usually given at events. I attended Codfish Game Clinic and I’ll be back with deep coverage of this event this week, so stay tuned.

After some changes to the brand, Comic-Con Portugal also followed up to some alterations to the event itself. One of those was the addition of Innovation Lab, a small area dedicated to Portuguese videogames.

A selection of videogames made in Portugal was made by Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses (Association of Portuguese Videogame Producers) and ended up being stacked:

• Aerowave OS, by ByBelka Studios.

• Bobo And The Chest Of Nightmares, by Polycast Labs.

• Desiree: Eyes On You, by Strangeberry Games.

• Hell Maiden, by Astral Shift.

• InfiniSpace, by Magnificent Ocean.

• Little Goody Two Shoes, by Astral Shift.

• MIRAI #167, by Orangenap Studio.

• Spectron, by Strawberry Fox Studios.

• Timepunk, by Aden Interactive.

• Twin Stick Checkers, by Mindera Gaming.

• Vroomity Loops, by Happy Chimkens.

There is no story in this edition of the newsletter because I’ll be doing a separate article dedicated to my coverage of Codfish Game Clinic. Stay tuned!