The Festival of the Bitsy-copier

The Festival of the Bitsy-copier turns part of Melbourne's 2020 Festival of the Photocopier into a compact browser game. More than 50 represented stallholders wait inside to talk about zines and zine culture, making this less a conventional adventure than a cheerful digital fairground archive.

What is The Festival of the Bitsy-copier?

The itch.io page opens with a simple Run archive control and frames the project as a digital record of a real-world zine fair. Its Bitsy format is a clever match for the subject: tiny rooms and tiny figures give independent publishing's folding tables a blocky afterlife. The physical 2020 event was much larger—an exhibiting artist reported more than 450 stallholders across two days—so this is best understood as a selective, conversational keepsake rather than a complete catalog. The appeal is in wandering from one represented maker to another and letting a community archive behave like a small game instead of a filing cabinet.

What you can do there

• Launch the browser archive
• Talk with represented zine stallholders

Why we picked it

A festival archive could have been a long list of names and links. This one turns preservation into a place you can enter, giving zine culture an appropriately handmade digital container. The more-than-50-stallholder premise is specific enough to invite browsing, while the short Bitsy scale keeps the commitment pleasantly low.

How to get the most from it

Choose Run archive on the itch.io page, then take the fair one table at a time. Talk with several represented stallholders rather than racing for an ending; the project is built around browsing voices and zine culture, not scoring points.

Good to know

The listing identifies an English-language HTML5 Bitsy release and estimates a visit at a few minutes. The landing page does not document controls, sound, mobile support, accessibility features, saving, or replay behavior, and the embedded archive may be framed only within itch.io.

Who made it, and when?

Jesse Eddy, Samantha Riegl, and Tegan Webb is the credited creator or organization.