My first intervention was in the classroom during the intervention showcase. When it was my turn to share, I got up and wrote Humans on the board. I explained that for my project, I wanted to ask random people to give me a word and tell me whether that word represents something that is political or apolitical. One word that had stumped me was “Humans”. Members of the classroom began to ask on the nature of the question. Does “humans” refers to a group of people or an individual? Can we truly say that anything is inherently political or are politics just a phenomenon that occurs? Regardless of what the consensus was in the end, I believe these are important questions to be asking in a world that has become so polarized due to politics.

I wanted to run the intervention again, this time in a smaller group with people who knew each other better. Over the weekend I was meeting a few friends for lunch so I decided to ask them the same question and see if they took the conversation in a different direction than the previous group. After presenting the prompt, my friends took the question as whether a person can live in a way that is unbothered by politics in the current era and what their life would have to look like to accomplish this. Concluding a long conversation, the answer was ultimately no. Even if a person is completely remote, self-sustained, and devoid of any contact with humans or human-made devices the fact that other people in the world can impact their standards of living through environmental impact or invasion means a living person cannot be completely separate from politics.

This project was inspired by Uncle Roy All Around You by Blast Theory and Paper Tiger TV as the goal of the intervention is to get people to ask thought provoking questions in settings that they normally wouldn’t. However, where Paper Tiger TV sought to teach the value of counterculture having a voice, my project is about showcasing the divide between two equal large and increasingly polarizing senses of culture by demonstrating how permeating and inescapable the differences are in our everyday lives. This is similar to Blast Theory’s project as it asks each participate to evaluate their disposition towards strangers but in a political sense as opposed to trust wise.

Photo taken during the second intervention. Permission to post granted shortly after.

Link:

https://noahwc.itch.io/objects-in-motion

Art is dead is a simple 2d sidescrolling platformer where every asset in the game is a company logo taken from the internet. Using the J and L keys, the player can manipulate the rotation of the platforms around them arranging their unique geometry in such a way that allows them to progress. At the end of the game, the player must choose to continue receiving stimulus or finally rest.

When designing this game, I wanted to capture the feeling of growing up in a digital era and tackle the commodification of attention. The two factors of the digital age I chose to highlight are the use of product placement making free entertainment lucrative, and how easy access to the internet at all times often distracts from mundane but necessary tasks such as sleeping. I’m sure we all have had late nights spent on YouTube or Netflix not realizing how many hours it’s been until the sun starts to poke through the window. The constant need to be stimulated isn’t a new experience, but the introduction of the internet has ensured that our engagement with the mediums that are the most stimulating can be commodified and engineered. This work was largely inspired by the Conceptualism movements anti-commodification of art sentiment as well as Vulture’s interview with comedian Bo Burnham where he talks about his take on growing up online (themes also present in his songs “Art Is Dead” and “Welcome to the Internet”).

Intention & Influence

Intention: 

We often make decisions in our lives, and often, they are influenced by other people’s thoughts and decisions. Sometimes, without even realizing it. This artwork’s purpose was to intervene in a public space to make people more aware of their decisions and how it may be impacted by others. Societal pressure and influence can sometimes make people make bad decisions or not think rationally. Unfortunately, I was one of those, what you call, sheep for a large majority of my life thus far because I wanted to fit in. I remember specifically this one friend that I had. Whenever she got into a fight with someone, I would take her side because I didn’t want to lose her, even if she was in the wrong. I snuck around and stole things with her. I lost people who really cared about me because of her influence. Then, after she left, I attached myself to other people like a parasite and agreed to whatever they said. When I couldn’t do that anymore, I began to agree to whatever the majority did. You must go to college, otherwise you’re a failure. You can’t wear this because it makes you look fat. You can’t do this, you must do this, do that. Eventually, it takes over your life. Now, as I’ve grown, I learned to have my own individuality and through this artwork, I wanted people to think about their decisions and how they may be influenced by others, to be more conscious of it. Nevertheless, no one is truly individual as we live in a society that influences all our thoughts, morals, and individuality. 

Influence:

Like my other pieces, this artwork was influenced a lot by me and my own personal experience. I’ve already mentioned that above in my Intention category so I won’t mention that in this section. Another influence comes from the guest presenters we had in class and their lecture on “Tactical Media”. Tactical media is interventions in a public space that challenges social norms and disrupts ‘normalcy’. That was essentially what our piece had to be. So, I took inspiration from one of their numerous examples of interventions. The one that stood out to me the most was the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO). I thought BLO was funny, almost like it was a prank. The BLO altered Barbie  and G.I Joe toys’ voice boxes so that they would be swapped. The G.I Joe toys would have the Barbie voice and lines while Barbie would have G.I Joe’s. It was goofy, as we know that isn’t their voice, but it still tackled what was the social norm back then, which were gender roles. The person who created BLO was Igor Vamos, and he created it in response to the voice lines the new Barbie at that time would say, such as “Math is hard.” With this intervention, BLO successfully invaded children’s homes in a harmless way, helping to break those gender norms/stereotypes or make parents and children alike to think about the impact of these norms. Similarly, I tried to make it fun, a little ridiculous, and it was like a prank, however at the end of it all, they would think about it and be proud they didn’t change their mind, while those who did acknowledged it. I was also inspired by C.Carr’s On Edge, which we read a little bit about. When reading On Edge, what I took from it was that art should explore discomfort and address the harder questions. That’s what makes art so thought provoking and meaningful, is when it breaks into what is normal, this little box that people are in, and tear down that box to expose them to the difficult topics that you just usually don’t think about. It’s uncomfortable to hear that you just fell to peer pressure or the influence of others and puts you in a position where you have to confront your decision making process and biases.

The famous BLO intervention put on display.

A poster for the BLO intervention.

Process

This artwork was one of the more difficult ones. I thought about three to four different ideas and was never satisfied because I felt like it didn’t really hit me like the other three artworks did, hence why this was the last one I completed. I was uninspired. During the time of this artwork, it was the 2024 election between Kamala and Donald Trump. This election was also the first time I would’ve been able to vote, so I did a lot of research and found myself very passionate about politics and who would become our president. So, I wanted to create an artwork that was somewhat based on politics. However, that was a sensitive subject and despite all the research I did, I still felt unprepared and uneducated to be talking or making my artwork based on politics. Then, there was the iteration where I tried to make it about censorship (that was my first pitch), but I also didn’t feel too strongly about it because it wasn’t something personal to my life and thus far, all my work has been something significant in my personal life. It wasn’t until my friend had mentioned that similarity contest that it inspired me to make this artwork. It’s not my best one because of time constraints (I couldn’t walk around to random people as much as I wanted and couldn’t get clips) and other issues I was going through, but I think it wasn’t bad. The results were also something I definitely did not expect, in the best way.

Playtests/Results

So, here were a few of the runs I had and the results! I tested around 10 people, with 4 people being in person and 6 people were online. Before that, I will tell you how this experiment worked. Firstly, I would tell them that this was an assignment for my art class and that I wanted their opinion. If they said sure, I would present them with an original color and two other colors, A and B. I would then ask them which out of the two colors, A and B, more accurately match the shade of the original color. Upon letting them answer which one they think it is, I let them know that the opposite letter they chose was chosen by a majority of people and if they were sure of their answer. They are then given a choice to change their answer. What the testers don’t know is that the colors are all the same and there is no difference so there is no right answer.

EXAMPLE

Original Color:

A:

B:

Me: Which one more likely matches the shade of the original color?

Tester: B

Me: Oh really? A majority of people chose A, are you sure you want to stick with your answer?

Tester: Yes/No

IMPROVEMENTS

I think I should’ve had more in person experiments. I know that this piece isn’t technically for research but rather just for more people to think about their relationship with peer pressure and autonomy, however I would’ve liked to see a more diverse peoples to enact the intervention on to see how they react. Furthermore, I realized that my piece wasn’t the best for those who are colorblind. Instead, I should have used an intricate symbol or drawing. I also wish I had more documentation for this artwork.

IN PERSON RESULTS

Unfortunately, I do not have photos of the people in person, but I enacted this intervention in the orange line in the evening. I chose this specific time as it was a Friday night and I wanted to document all sorts of people, whether they were people getting out of work or students going to parties. Two of the in person tests were students going home from a party and the other two were working adults, with one participant being an older woman in her 50s. The two students stayed with their vote, regardless of when I mentioned that the majority of people I asked chose the other color while the older working adults shrugged and said the opposite color instead. I thought this was very interesting. When I told them the point of the experiment, they all laughed or realized and would say “that made sense.”

ONLINE RESULTS

In comparison, the majority of people who got asked online actually stayed with their answers without changing them which I thought was pretty cool. I asked one older man who was in his late 30s, one who is currently in middle school and is 12 years old, and four other people who are around my age. When I told them the point of the experiment, they also laughed it off, as though it was a prank.

Me introducing the test to a tester.

My little sister’s reaction once it was revealed. I thought it was funny, hahaha.

When one of the tester’s let me know what was lacking…

Just a reaction to the test since the colors were the same.

Another tester and their reaction even after I revealed that the majority of people chose the other color.

The twelve year old tester’s decision and chose not to change it.

A group of testers’ decisions. Pink is me. This was an interesting test as they were each trying to convince each other it was the other, but no one was convinced, even after I introduced the majority of people chose a certain color.

OVERALL

Overall, I think there are many factors that come into play when someone is affected by societal pressure or not, from their background, to the anonymity, to age, location, etc. However, I thought this was a fun experiment as I saw or listened to all their different reactions. It also made me… feel a little more positively towards this problem that I thought heavily influenced us as from the couple people I asked, a lot of them stayed true to their answer. Perhaps some of us are healing. 

“Pick up one feeling at a time.

Shout or say every feeling you pick up.”

Intention & Influence

Intention:

Are negative emotions bad to have? 

Nowadays, we’re told they’re not. That it is good when we express our feelings, talk about them, communicate to others how we feel, and be empathetic. Emotions, especially negative ones, and expressing them are important in order to process them and let them go. They’re not bad to have, but they’re bad to hold on to.

However, traditional Asian households think differently. I remember the multiple arguments I had with my friends. They wouldn’t tell me how they were feeling and kept it inside until I eventually found out, got angry at them for not telling me, and for not trying to work it out with me. It was frustrating to hear that they were feeling left out, or that they got upset at something I did from another person and the way they resolved those issues and those feelings were by keeping it in and distancing themselves. After talking to them, they told me this was how they were raised. This was what they were used to, that it’s hard to be confrontational, and that it’s hard to express what they were feeling, especially the negative feelings.

In a way, I was raised similarly. Mental health was a faraway fantasy in my mom’s and some of my Asian friends’ parents’ minds. You had to focus on your grades and get As. You weren’t allowed to stay home if you were sick or feeling mentally unwell. 

As we know now, this wasn’t healthy for us. Bad mental health DOES eventually affect one’s physical health. They affect your grades, your work, your relationships, and your life. If left alone, it takes over and breaks you into pieces. 

That was why I decided to make this my final piece. It took my mom and I multiple years of arguments, crying, misunderstandings, and hurt. However, she’s begun to understand its importance. I wanted to create this piece to simulate that feeling of being unable to express your negative emotions in a traditional Asian household, having you hold chopsticks and pick out noodles with feelings on them from a dinner table. If you talked about happy emotions, you weren’t reprimanded. However, if you picked the negative emotions, you would get hit. This was the conditioning that many Asian children experienced that eventually made it so that they were scared to express their own emotions, especially the negative ones.

Influence:

So, this artwork was a combination of a score and appropriation. When I first saw the prompt for this project, compared to my last two artworks, I wanted to create something more simple but meaningful. For a while, I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to create. A lot of the experiences I’ve had I already put into an artwork; my score was about the significance of gift giving, my appropriating artwork was about the cultural appropriation of my religion, and my intervention was about societal pressure and sheep mentality. So, I was stumped for a while thinking about what I would like to create an artwork out of. 

However, that was when I ran into trouble with my group of friends. We had a long talk, and one of my Chinese friends justified a friend’s failure to communicate the problems he was facing because he came from a traditional household and that was the culture in his family; to not express emotions or problems. She expressed that she was similar and would rather let it pass over than talk about it. So, with that in mind, it influenced the meaning behind this game. 

I also took inspiration from the case studies Sharp mentioned in his book “Work of Games” — “The Marriage” by Rod Humble and “Dys4ia” by Anna Anthropy.

Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy.

The Marriage by Rod Humble

Both utilized simple shapes, mechanics, and colors to convey the experience that they wanted to tell players, whether it was the balance of a marriage or the experience of societal pressure and gender dysmorphia. The focus was on the expression, feeling, and experience rather than how polished the game was, which I enjoyed. Similarly, in my game, the player only has some fake clay noodles with emotions on them, a bowl to hold them, and some chopsticks. Despite its simplicity, it creates a scene and mechanic which has meaning that the player understands when playing the game. Like in “The Marriage” and “Dys4ia”, they have basic shapes and mechanics, but it communicates an idea and creates a scene for the player. For example, in the beginning of “Dys4ia”, the player doesn’t exactly ‘fit’ into a slot when trying to get through a hole in the wall blockade. Although it doesn’t directly mention it until later into the level, the player automatically understands that the blocks they were moving were an abstract representation of this person’s body. The player has a sense that the person didn’t feel like they fit into the body that they had. When playing my game, players automatically see its relation to Asian culture without anything directly telling the player what the artwork was about.

In general, Sharp’s book explained how games are legitimate art that DO parr traditional artistic mediums like cinema and paintings which convey ideas, emotions, and aesthetics through its mechanics, interactivity, and symbolic/abstract design. He also exclaimed about how art games are similar to artistic movements like the Fluxus and Dada movement, which emphasized simplicity, conveying a message, and which  strayed from traditional art (in this case, straying from the tradition of games simply being fun and entertainment). So, I wanted to make a game that was a combination of those movements while following Sharp’s definition of art games. 

Process

For the process, I went through two iterations and tweaked the score a bit. This artwork contains a score, which tells the player what to do, and has elements of appropriation as I borrowed a bowl and chopsticks from a friend of mine that, to me, represented Asian culture the most. The noodles were made from baked clay that I then wrote emotions on after it was fully baked. At first, they really looked like worms. 

Before all of this process, I had originally wanted to make it so that the negative emotions would be impossible to pick up. However, if a player decides to pick up the negative emotions, then they would get punished for it. The problem with this iteration was that one, the punishment was too hard and was not inclusive of older, younger, disabled, or weaker individuals and two, because I laid the emotions on a piece of paper and they only had chopsticks to give them that hint, players couldn’t really tell the cultural background the artwork was stemming off of. So, instead of a harsh punishment, a slap on the wrist was enough to condition players to avoid the negative emotions, and instead of making it impossible to pick up the negative emotions, I made it so that players would have to repeat the game over and over again until they no longer picked up negative emotions. Not only was this more efficient mechanically, it carried the message that I wanted to convey more accurately. Traditional Asian households are always very passive aggressive, and most of the hurt comes from the words of our parents when they choose to ignore the emotions we are trying to convey to them. Then, in addition to the bowl and noodles as my medium, it created the game what it is now.

Before I baked the noodles. The dome on the right was filler noodles so that the ball would look more realistically full.

First iteration of the artwork.

Playtests

There were a total of 4 playtests, however I only had photos for two of those playtests. One of them is seen above with the lined paper used to write out the emotions and the pens to be the chopsticks the players use to pick up the emotions and the second was the third to final playtest where I just changed the wording to the score a bit from “Pick up your feelings; Shout or say every feeling you pick up” to “Pick up one feeling at a time; Shout or say every feeling you pick up”. The playtests, except for the first one, went as I would have expected with every player eventually avoiding the negative emotions and only picking up the positive emotions until there was none left. I think it was a fairly successful artwork, but if I had more time I would add more color to the noodles and maybe some other ingredients when eating udon or pho.

One of the playtesters choices of noodles and emotions. They chose three negative emotions and two positives before only choosing positive emotions.

Introduction

Many strategy or building games exist on the market that have a nation or civilization aspect to them, where you maintain a country and expand its influence. Most of these are typically war-oriented or resource management games, or both. For example, Civilization is a series of games that involve exploiting the resources in your surroundings and conquering other nations.

Thus I set out to make a game about building a country but have its focus not be war. I tried to design a game that had more of a focus on the player’s relationship with the environment and also the player’s relationship with their own nation. This is to oppose the mindset that most games create: that the environment is simply something that exists to be exploited, and that the nation is something that only functions to serve the player. Through my game’s design that fosters environmental care, these ideas are challenged.

The result is Countryworks, a (relatively simple) environmentally oriented country builder.

Aesthetics

I wanted to have a pixelated isometric style similar to Habbo Hotel. It was also supposed to evoke Minecraft.

In the top left corner there is a country customizer where you can change the flag and country name. On the left bar is a list of all the different structures you can build, such as farms, towns, and roads. Below that is a list of all the Points you have, which are used for performing actions (such as building, destroying, farming, etc.)

In the top right corner are the 3 health bars: Environment, Country Satisfaction, and Food Supply. If any one of them drains to zero, the game ends.

The button on the bottom right is used to go to the Next Day, which regenerates all your Points and shows you all the newspaper articles that highlight events in your country.

Resources

Resources are extracted from the structures you build (towns, farms, etc.) When you click on resources in your inventory, they are converted into Points or Cultural Items. There are resources like Metal, which you acquire by mining, but there are also abstract resources like Ideas.

Culture

Like mentioned earlier, you can convert Resources into Cultural Items. For example, there is a random chance that a Resource can get converted into a Cultural Item like a novel, poetry compilation, etc.

From there, you can give it a name, change its appearance, and then add it to your collection of your country’s produced cultural works.

Every cultural item you create will raise your Country Satisfaction level, meaning that culture serves a distinct purpose for keeping your nation happy.

The newspaper events at the end of each Day should reveal to you how your population is feeling as a result of this.

Environment

The environment is full of many natural landscapes. In the start of the game, you can place your country anywhere you want. This means you could have a nation hiding in the freezing mountains, camped in the arid desert, or living on an isolated island: highlighting how human populations can find ways to survive in any part of the world.

The more you build, the more your Environment bar will drain (forcing the player to consider how they use their land and what they place down). This means that they can’t just destroy everything in search of resources for they will poison their own citizens if they cause environmental damage.

Even the names of some of the tools used in the game for shaping the environment around you have very drastic and direct names for what they do. Instead of something like “Axe” for a tool for chopping wood, the tool is called “Deforestation” and has an image of a chainsaw cutting a tree stump. There are other tools like “Mining Excavator”, “Monoculture Grass”, “Land Reclamation”, and “Grove”.

I would argue that “Grove” should not belong on this list as a form of environmental destruction, but I think that any form of human interaction with the environment should be highlighted: that forest you just built wasn’t there before, who knows what effect it might’ve had on the animals or plants that were already living there.

If a player neglects their environment for long enough, they will lose the game in a game over screen similar to what is shown below.

To Be Improved

Countryworks functions very well at teaching the player how to be conscious of their environmental decisions. It teaches them to handle resource management in a different way through the challenges the game provides.

In the future, I would like the Country Satisfaction health bar to be more sophisticated. At the moment, it goes down during random events such as infrastructure breakdowns where the citizens will be unhappy. However, the only way to bring the Country Satisfaction back up is by producing Cultural Items (which have nothing to do with infrastructure), so in the future I will make infrastructure distinct from (but somehow related to) Country Satisfaction.

Conclusion

As I didn’t have enough time to gather detailed feedback on how the player perceived the environmental message, I still have work to do in the area of value messaging. The game is quite limited in scope but it definitely has the possibility of being something much more creative and sophisticated. I hope to improve on it more in the coming months and hopefully I will have something that is much more replayable and fun.

I had a lot of fun working on it and I hope to eventually publish it to my page at syndhex.itch.io.

Game by Bastión Toledo-Altamirano

Maze of Life

Welcome to The Maze of Life, an immersive and introspective journey through the twists and turns of existence. In this game, you will navigate a maze filled with challenges drawn from the realities of life—financial crises, relationship struggles, health setbacks, career hurdles, and personal growth dilemmas. Each step you take will test your resilience, decision-making, and emotional endurance.

Creative Intent: 

In today’s fast-paced world, we are constantly bombarded with information—news, social media updates, and personal stories. People have become quick to judge, comment, and critique others’ experiences, often without pausing to consider the emotions and struggles behind those stories. This tendency to treat others’ lives as entertainment or debate material strips away empathy and humanity.

The Maze of Life is designed as a response to this phenomenon. Its core purpose is to immerse players in the realities of life’s challenges, forcing them to confront complex situations as if they were their own. This isn’t just a game; it’s a tool for fostering understanding, building empathy, and encouraging self-reflection. By the end of the experience, participants will hopefully think twice before passing judgment on others, instead choosing to approach the world with greater compassion.

Game Setup

1. The Maze:
   • The maze is a 6×6 grid, containing 36 cards:
     • 32 Event Cards: These represent life challenges you must confront.
     • 4 Lucky Cards: Special cards that allow you to skip any one event of your choice.
2. Shuffling:
   • Shuffle all 36 cards and place them randomly face down in a 6×6 grid.
   • Each row represents a decade of your life, starting in your 20s:
     • Row 1: Ages 20–30
     • Row 2: Ages 30–40
     • Row 3: Ages 40–50
     • Row 4: Ages 50–60
     • Row 5: Ages 60–70
     • Row 6: Ages 70–80
3. Starting Position:
   • Begin at the first card in Row 1 (your 20s).

Game Rules

1. Rolling the Dice:
   • Roll a six-sided die to determine which card in the row you must face:
     • 1: First card in the row.
     • 2: Second card in the row.
     • 3: Third card in the row.
     • 4: Fourth card in the row.
     • 5: Fifth card in the row.
     • 6: Sixth card in the row.
2. Facing Events:
   • Flip over the card matching your dice roll to reveal the life event.
   • If it is an Event Card, write down or discuss:
     • Your Reaction: How does this challenge make you feel?
     • Your Plan: How would you approach this situation?
     • Your Outcome: What do you hope to achieve by overcoming this challenge?
   • If it is a Lucky Card, save it to skip any future event of your choice.
3. Skipping Events:
   • Use a Lucky Card to bypass an event that feels too difficult or unwanted.
   • Discard the Lucky Card after use.
4. Advancing Through the Maze:
   • Once you complete or skip an event, roll the dice again to proceed to the next card in the same row.
   • After completing all six cards in a row, advance to the next row (representing the next decade of your life).
5. Completing the Challenge:
   • Successfully finish all six rows to complete your journey through life.
   • If you fail to overcome an event or run out of Lucky Cards before finishing Row 6, the challenge ends in failure.

Winning and Reflection

• Victory: Completing all six rows signifies that you’ve navigated through life’s trials and emerged stronger. Reflect on your journey:
  • Which challenges were the hardest?
  • How did you use your Lucky Cards?
  • What does this game reveal about your problem-solving style and resilience?
• Failure: If you cannot finish all rows, consider:
  • What challenges stopped your progress?
  • What would you do differently next time?

♠ Spades – Financial and Career Challenges

Spades represent challenges involving finances, careers, and external struggles.

1. You lost 3 million on a risky stock investment. Worse, you borrowed money to make the investment, and creditors now block your door every day demanding repayment.
2. Your main source of income is suddenly cut off due to a layoff, leaving you with only enough savings to last two months.
3. A close friend asked to borrow a large sum of money to start a business but failed, and now they refuse to pay you back.
4. Your credit card debt has spiraled out of control, and banks are threatening legal action unless you settle immediately.
5. After years of saving, your dream home purchase falls through due to a real estate scam, leaving you both homeless and penniless.
6. After years of loyalty, your boss fires you without warning, claiming your skills are no longer relevant.
7. Despite working tirelessly for years, you’re passed over for a promotion in favor of someone less qualified.
8. Your company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and you’re forced to work unpaid while trying to find a new job.

♥ Hearts – Health and Relationship Challenges

Hearts focus on emotional, physical health, and interpersonal struggles.

1. You’ve been diagnosed with a chronic illness requiring expensive treatment. Without it, your condition will worsen, but the cost is beyond your means.
2. A sudden accident leaves you with a permanent disability, forcing you to quit your job and adjust to a new way of life.
3. A loved one is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and you must decide whether to quit your job to care for them full-time.
4. You are severely injured in a road rage incident caused by someone else but receive no compensation due to lack of evidence.
5. You discover your spouse has been hiding significant financial troubles, and your trust in them is shattered.
6. Your best friend betrays you by sharing a deeply personal secret, leaving you unsure if the friendship can survive.
7. You find out your sibling has been manipulating family members against you, causing deep divisions in your family.
8. A toxic relationship in your life is draining your energy, but you feel guilty about cutting ties with them.

♣ Clubs – Social and Personal Growth Challenges

Clubs symbolize social dynamics, personal growth, and moral dilemmas.

1. You are falsely accused of something at a public event, and the rumor spreads through your social circle, damaging your reputation.
2. A once-close group of friends drifts apart after a heated argument, leaving you feeling lonely and unsure how to reconnect.
3. You witness a serious injustice in your community but are too afraid to speak up, fearing backlash.
4. You’re excluded from an important gathering of your peers and only find out through social media.
5. You’ve realized that you’ve been living a life based on others’ expectations, but you don’t know how to start living authentically.
6. You set a major goal for yourself but fail to meet it, leaving you doubting your abilities and worth.
7. You discover a past mistake has come back to haunt you, and you must decide whether to confront it or let it linger.
8. A deeply held belief of yours is challenged, making you question your values and identity.

♦ Diamonds – Lucky Breaks and Positive Opportunities

Diamonds represent moments of hope, lucky breaks, and unexpected opportunities.

1. A long-forgotten stock investment unexpectedly skyrockets in value, covering all your debts and leaving you with extra savings to start anew.
2. An anonymous donor clears your medical debt, allowing you to focus on recovery without financial stress.
3. A groundbreaking new treatment for your chronic illness becomes affordable, significantly improving your quality of life.
4. A distant relative passes away and leaves you a substantial inheritance, helping you secure financial stability.
5. You’re offered a dream job with excellent pay and work-life balance, without even applying for it, thanks to a glowing recommendation.
6. An unexpected opportunity forces you to choose between stability and pursuing a lifelong dream.
7. After years of ignoring your passions, you now feel it’s too late to pursue what truly makes you happy.
8. Your child confesses to being involved in illegal activities, and you must decide whether to turn them in or protect them.

🍎 is a live-action roleplay game made for children and adults. I cherish the unexpected things that people would not usually think or do in real life, so I wanted to provide a media (the game) as an excuse for them to experiment with different views of the world and to enjoy the simple joy of exploring their childish side.

The Larp starts with the perspective (narrative) of an apple that has been forgotten on the road by its owner on their way home. The player will be roleplaying as the poor apple in the process of trying to get back to the supermarket.

It was a typical day at the bustling supermarket, where shelves were stocked with the freshest produce, ready to make their way into the homes of eager customers. Among them sat a bright, shiny apple, nestled in the fruit section, waiting to be chosen. But when the last customer of the day hurried out of the store, in their rush, they forgot the apple. 

Left behind, alone on the cold concrete outside, it sat for what felt like an eternity, its glossy skin slowly fading. As the hours passed, the apple felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. It had been so close to finding its place in someone’s kitchen, but now, abandoned and forgotten, it faced a world it didn’t understand. Its once bright, cheerful hue began to dull with every passing minute, the emptiness inside it growing larger. The sounds of the city, once full of promise, now felt harsh and distant. With no one to turn to, the apple began its lonely journey back to the supermarket, hoping that somehow it could find its way home—but deep down, it couldn’t shake the feeling that it might never be noticed again. 

Determined to get back to the supermarket, the apple pushed forward, rolling as fast as it could. The street was cluttered with trash bags, blowing around in the wind, and the apple tried its best to push them out of the way. But in its hurry, it didn’t see a small pile of blueberries ahead. With a soft thud, it crashed into them, crushing the berries under its weight. The blueberries quickly bounced up, their tiny round bodies shaking with anger. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” one of them snapped. The others joined in, grumbling loudly. “You squashed us!” another blueberry complained. 

action 1: The player should say sorry to each blueberry and of course you will count the number first. 

The apple froze, feeling a deep wave of guilt. It hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, but now it realized how much damage it had caused. Slowly, it rolled forward, its heart heavy, and said softly, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there. Please forgive me.” The blueberries stared at the apple for a moment. Finally, one of them spoke up. “You need to be more careful next time.” The apple nodded, feeling embarrassed but relieved. The anger faded, and with that small act of kindness, the apple continued on its way, hoping its journey would lead it back home.

The apple continued its journey, determined to find the aisle it belonged in. As it rolled down the street, it spotted something familiar—a loaf of bread. It was an old friend, now its golden-brown, no longer the small doughy loaf it once was. Even though the bread had grown strong, the apple still felt protective. It gently rolled up to the loaf and covered it with a small cloth, like a blanket, to keep it warm and crispy. The bread smiled softly, touched by the apple’s care. “Thank you,” it said quietly. The apple felt a little less lonely, happy to have helped its old friend.

action2: Find a blanket-like material to warp the bread you find in the supermarket and gently pet it. 

As the apple rolled on, it realized how much time had passed. Feeling brave, it decided to confess its feelings to the celery, the one it had admired from afar in the produce aisle. The apple rolled up to a bunch of celery and, with a hopeful heart, slipped a small ring onto one of the stalks. “Will you be mine?” it asked quietly. The celery didn’t answer, standing still and silent. But the apple didn’t mind. It had shared its feelings, and that was enough. The apple rolled away, content, knowing it had tried.

action 3: put your ring on a stalk-like vegetable and purpose to it

Botany Manor project

–aims to heal people by generating imaginary plants nurtured by tears (rain) and rage (heat) around campus.

(concept & drawings)