Code Coven mentors and trains marginalised genders to enter the game making space. I was curious about the possibility of creating games that could respond to social issues. I wanted to explore if I could navigate the game making space as an outsider and create projects that allow us to rethink systems that cause harm, in areas such as inequality and climate justice. There’s a broad spectrum of games making room for interdisciplinary practices to utilise the participatory, interactive and storytelling components of game making.
For our final group project, I worked with Ndidiamaka (Didi) and Kunza, on creating a visual novel game, completed in just over two weeks, working across different skillsets and time zones Nigeria, Pakistan and UK. We decided early on that we really wanted to make a visual novel game on the theme of climate change which we all felt strongly about. This was in addition to the set class themes of:
1. Alien 2. Offline, 3. Last One.
In this game, Blackbird needs to destroy the poison plants in the garden and to plant lavender bushes in order to improve their health. I used an existing collage of a community garden space, creating assets from it and used simple animation which I’d always wanted to do.
