A history of many strange games

It's exactly what is sounds like. Thanks for coming :D

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Thank you @klavsc for making this beautiful headstone for me from my game Dream Ghost!!! #woodcraft #indiedev #deathpositive

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Angry Baby! art for #BabyBreak-Out! #art #gamedev #indiedev #cute #art #colourful #photoshop

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The Diversity of Representation in Video Games

An academic essay/poster project from last year. Had a good time writing and designing this one. If the topic interests you (or if you are in game dev) have a read!

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Designing Fear

An extremely short documentary about the design of horror games Saoirse Lynch and I made a year ago. I want to do a proper deep-dive one day (once I have free-time again).

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Heroes never die! #overwatch #game #ps4 #idiealotinthisgame #butsofun #guessmymain

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Dare: The Hollow Free Tabletop RPG

Before this year I had never really played tabletop role playing games. When I was much younger I had a sort of kids murder mystery birthday party in which everyone dressed up, we role played and there was a game master but for some reason, despite enjoying this particular experience a lot, I had convinced myself that I just wouldn’t like tabletop RPGs, mostly because of the intense culture surrounding them and their, oft joked about uber-complexity.

This year, as part of a course I am taking, I had an RPG/LARP module. The first tabletop RPG we played was Dungeons and Dragons (I have no idea how I got this far in my life without playing D&D). The majority of our class had never played D&D and it was explained to us that you need to read the rules, create a character and learn as you play with a somewhat experienced GM. This sounded pretty good to me but the rules turned out to be extremely daunting to a newcomer. It’s hard to create a character when you are struggling to figure out how the game play feels or what is going to happen while you play. We had a short time to play the game (1 hour and 30 mins) and didn't get very far with most of our actions, receiving no feedback during gameplay that we were doing anything correctly. As someone new to tabletop RPGs, I wasn’t in awe.

The next RPG explained things far better - Trail of Cthulhu “The Dying of St.Margarets”. It suited my personality better, I love horror overall and investigation based gameplay made things clearer. Making characters was far easier and I felt I could be more creative with a character that was based in something nearer reality than complete fantasy. The gameplay was pretty great too. I received actual clues and was unraveling something. “Finally, something tangible to ease me in” I thought. The ending however was incredibly anticlimactic.“Did i die?” I say “No” says the GM, “Did I go mad?” I ask the GM “No”, “Well ok then”.

The next RPG we played, I loved! Fiasco! It...was….incredible. Simple in premise, all it is, is storytelling, that's basically it. You choose from options provided to you based on a sort of points system and collectively take turns telling a strange story of failure as you go. I loved the looseness, the way it catered to my creativity, allowed me to improvise and its simplicity overall. As someone, who at this point was still trying to wrap her head around the concept of tabletop RPGs and what they were for, this was a wonderfully inclusive experience. 

As part of this same module I was to write my own tabletop RPG, not a daunting task at all I thought ...ha ha. The game is called “Dare” and the campaign I came up with is called “The Hollow”. Anyway this post is just to share with you guys what I devised in the end, a game to introduce people (like me) to tabletop role playing games. My game has a simple premise “It is 1992, a bunch of high school students enter on a dare but they won't be leaving. Not unless they can uncover the horrifying Secret of the Hollow House.” The players make up this group of kids and must use all the skills at their disposal to get out. I designed this game with simplicity and accessibility in mind because now there’s a real place in my heart for tabletop role playing games and I want more people to have the experience of playing one without the obstacles I faced. So here you guys go. Have fun!

Download from Dropbox here

Played by 2-4 players and a GM

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Finally have time to play! #game #zelda #nintendo #summer #twilightprincesshd

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magic in mundanity?: Goldenleaf, development and inspiration

When I was seven my mother, being an avid gamer at the time, brought home a new game. The game was “Ocarina of Time”. I had played games all throughout my childhood but I truly fell in love with games that summer. I realised games could give me so many things I never thought I could have; exploration, adventure, travel, magic, a safe way to fail and learn the value of that. I was hooked.

Looking back on this experience I realised something strange about the way I played. While battling through hordes of evil enemies in the world of “Ocarina of Time”, every once in awhile I would, without even the suggestion of any real progression, return to the Kokiri Forest. I would just run around, talk to villagers and cut grass, not for the rupees, just for the sheer enjoyment it gave me. The music that plays in the Kokiri Forest still signals happiness to me as it does many others. I love the Kokiri Forest, Ordon Village, Skyloft, Outset Island. There was this great sense of belonging and safety these areas gave off, mostly because that was what they were designed to be, safe zones. I love the feeling of a magic home but I wanted more ways, different ways, to feel those feelings.

I did eventually get bored in these areas in games. I would always return as I played but they were somewhat hollow, mostly by design as a way to force players to leave and continue the epic quest. All gamers love an epic quest, an adventure, and that is the main reason I love Zelda myself but this was something additional I found in those games. Something small but special. I wanted to recreate the feeling I had in my magic homes but with … more. I wasn't sure how to go about doing that so I thought more about what I loved about my non-magic non-digital home. It was the people. The meaningful interactions and conversations and, in a sense, its mundanity.  

At this point I asked myself “So you like a real home’s mundanity and these virtual homes magicosity*, among other things. How are you going to make that work?” but the more I thought about this the sillier the question seemed and the more obvious the answer. Real life has magic in small moments. In a person who you care about’s smile or laugh, in the amazing nature that surrounds us, in the meaningful realisations we have about our perspectives and others.

So I created my latest game around these ideas. It’s called Goldenleaf and you can check it out here. Through it I aimed to bring out the sweetness, magic and feeling of belonging you get in some of the mentioned outset areas while grounding it in something real. I wanted to make a place I felt relaxed playing around in, which had some real interactions with what feel like real people. Let me know if that's what you get from it or if I totally missed the mark. I would love to hear what some of you think of Goldenleaf, safety in games and mundanity and magic.

Thanks for listening.

*I am aware magicosity is not a word.