Since this summer, I’ve been working on a concept for a game inspired by the French countryside, and the ecological (and social, and political) crises that menace it, told through the lens of a non-binary, brown protagonist. The concept is evolving as I confer with my muses and marinate in the mental compost of life in this part of the world. I realize the project is going to be a long one, and the creative energy within me wants to get something out NOW. So, I decided to jam on a smaller project while working on the big one, which, by the way, is still untitled.

Uprooted: A Short

This game is what I would call a short, like an animated film, but with gameplay. It’s set in a magical-realist future where Earth is flooded. There’s a girl on a floating temple, a demon-boy on a flying motorbike, and an ocean of trash. It’s been in my head for a while. I had the idea for it when I moved to Nepal around 2018, fiddled around with it in VR, wrote it into a short story last year, submitted that to a magazine, received a rejection, and now I’m giving it making a game out of it, which is the medium that feels right. I’m envisioning it primarily in third person, with point-and-click-adventure elements.

At its current state it’s a mishmash of images. The idea is to give a taste, a feeling. I’m not super concerned with the story making sense. I just want to tell it. I realized, personally, it’s about the feeling of rootlessness that I feel as a migrant, and hopelessness in the face of widespread disaster.

It’s also an exercise in worldbuilding, storytelling, and just about every other skill that I want to hone. I’ve been sketching, storyboarding, and prototyping. Next, I’ll be moving into greyboxing the environment and characters in 3D, which is kind of an intermediate step between concept and final art. This project is going to require a lot of art assets, more than I’ve ever produced, and I need some loose practice sketching out forms and shapes to learn my own hand. The cool thing is that I’m going to be using VR to do it! Stay tuned 🙂

Bisous,

Bansuri