Games

game design

I’ve designed video games in Twine, GDevelop, Unity, and even Google Sheets. Most of the games have social justice or cultural critique as an underlying theme.

right_space

My most recent game, right_space, uses limited game controls to emphasize how starting with limited resources limits upward mobility. By only having two controls, right and space (jump), the player’s actions are limited: there is no going back if a mistake is made and the consequences will be felt for the remainder of the (short) game.

What initially started as a minimalist black-and-white platformer turned into a colorful platformer with various coin values, different musical cues, and commentary written on the walls throughout the game.

Early draft of right_space, with the black background and white objects and playable character. This version of the game is lacking context and the playable area is small. — Early draft of *right_space*, with the black background and white objects and playable character.

Final version of right_space. The game is a pixel platformer. The background is gray chevrons and there are small single line platforms and pink blocks and bricks visible. There is a blue coin and four yellow coins scattered in the image. There are two text boxes visible: "not an accident" and "those are just the tools available to you" are read on the screen. — Early draft of *right_space*, with the black background and white objects and playable character.

You can play right_space on itch.io here. Playtime is anywhere from thirty seconds to three minutes.

I’d be interested to hear your high score in the game!

Something Wild

Something Wild, a mixed modality game using fiber arts and digital storytelling, is a serious game about loss and grief. The game is a choose-your-own-adventure about returning home in the wake of loss, not for a funeral, but for the aftermath. It is the product of my own experiences with loss during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

In framing Something Wild, I looked to Tsing’s (2018) discussions of precarity and blasted landscapes, and Haraway’s (2016) discussion of “untold stories—those that need a restitched seedbag and a travelling sower to hollow out a place to flourish after the catastrophes.” Through the lens of the game, I reimagined grief as a “blasted landscape” and invited the player to physically explore that space via decision trees, wherein the player gathers and collects objects, encounters companions, and stitches a literal map through the narrator’s memories and grief.

There was a single playtest for Something Wild, and the result was a chaotic and messy map of grief and renewal.

The map for Something Wild. It is a plain cream linen map with handdrawn depictions of rivers, mountains, and forests. It is stretched over a 12" hoop. — The map for *Something Wild*, hand-drawn on linen and stretched over a hoop.

A shadow box for Something Wild. It is chaotic and messy. The map is completed in red, messy stitches and threads along the route. The seedbag for the game is included, but the contents are displayed in the shadowbox: a black and white image of a young woman in her early 20s, and three blurry polaroids are visible. — The map for *Something Wild*, hand-drawn on linen and stretched over a hoop.