Submission Guidelines

A MAZE. Magazine welcomes your submissions! Each issue explores a single theme from any and all angles. We welcome writing and art and text-game installations and any other creative formats that can fit into the confines of print. The more subversive, the better. Pitch us your weird, unlikely, and obscure ideas at magazine@a-maze.net.

We particularly want to hear from less represented voices. The industry needs to hear what you have to say and we want to provide a platform for everyone. If English is not your first language, don't worry. Our editors will help you get across what you have to say.  

A MAZE. Magazine is a non-profit outfit. We pay for the printing and distribution out of our own pockets. For this reason, we are currently unable to pay contributors. We are actively working on funding and towards paying contributors one day. But for now that's how it is. We are all in the same boat. The boat of love for the indie games scene.

  1. We accept personal essays, reportage, think-pieces, interviews, photography, illustrations, and other creative assortments of printable material. It's preferable if you pitch us before you have worked on the piece, so we can tell you if it will be a good fit for the magazine or if we already have a similar piece lined up. It helps a lot if you can be specific in your pitch email about what you have in mind. If we accept your pitch, an editor will contact you to discuss the word limit, preferred angle, and deadline.

  2. We accept published pieces. We may ask you to update it, though.

  3. We accept simultaneous submissions. Just update us if another publication has agreed to publish your piece and there will be a conflict with their publishing terms.

  4. We accept submissions from all over the world, but as our audience is international, hyper-local content is not typically relevant for us.

  5. We do not accept reviews of your own game. We will almost always prefer a thoughtful essay about a broader issue that happens to involve your game. If we think your game is awesome, we may instead assign a different writer to interview someone from your game dev team.

  6. Actually, safe to say that we don't accept reviews – period. We will almost always prefer to learn more about a game for reasons beyond a boring evaluation of its gameplay. Send us an essay or reportage instead.

  7. If your piece requires reporting, please, do some reporting. Get quotes, statistics, studies, or other outside information to back up any claims you make in the work you submit to us. Although we are primarily a print magazine, we accept embedded hyperlinks in your submission.

  8. If you would like to submit a personal essay, please know that your piece requires framing and context, provide a timeline and any relevant information to help readers understand.

  9. The editors reserve the final say on style and copy edits and how your piece will appear in the final print issue. The final print layout will not be shared with contributors. Our timelines are extremely tight and as it is we barely manage to coordinate the x amount of timezones that separate our editorial team.

  10. For the love of humanity, don't be mean to our editors. They're not out to make you look bad. They're out to make your work look good and to make sure the magazine appears coherent. They're unpaid professionals and they sold their souls to A MAZE. only because they have the milk of kindness in their veins. We are all humans. We all make mistakes. We always try to make things right but there will be times when one has to put a foot down politely. Politely!