This Pittsburgh arcade is now a tiny virtual world

If you enjoy experimental video games and milling around art installations but find yourself stuck at home during the pandemic, one Pittsburgh arcade has swapped physical space for a little virtual world. LikeLike is a gallery dedicated to showcasing weird and creative indie games. Now, that’s now happening in LikeLike Online, which LikeLike calls “the tiniest MMORPG.”

LikeLike Online debuted on Friday, but it remains open to the public. The current show is built with the Bitsy game-making tool, and it’s appropriately titled “An Itsy Bitsy Crisis.” Instead of playing games on real screens and arcade cabinets, you can click on the walls to find short Bitsy projects on the themes of “catastrophes and rebirths,” all playable online. (On the downside, you can’t watch other people experience the games; on the upside, you’ll never wait in line for a game.) Make sure to check out the tiny backyard!

LikeLike says the current space will stay up for “a while,” and a new show will start on May 1st, mirroring the gallery’s normal schedule. The new shows will come with new kinds of spaces, and the project itself is open source, so you can build your own gallery with some work.