A game that caught my interest while scrolling through the list of games presented at IndieCade 2021 was a Tabletop RPG by the name of “Anyone can Wear the Mask”, developed by Jeff Stormer. This is a role-playing game where three players play as the Hero, the Villain, and the City, and each role has their own characteristics and control. It’s a game about superheroes where every life matters and every decision counts. I, for one, am a big fan of the superhero genre, and so I decided to give it a try. I gathered two of my friends, both of whom have never played a TTRPG in their life before, and we got started. I played as the City, the role really dedicated to being the Gamemaster. I controlled who lived where, the districts and neighborhoods of the city, and the overall narrative being played out. My friend Eric was the Villain, a role where he could control the dangers of the city and the criminal underground that held power over the city. My friend Riley played the Hero, the role dedicated to saving and protecting the innocents around him. He had less overall control than the City and the Villain, but his reactions to what transpired had an effect on the people around him as he created his legacy. We had a blast playing the game. The hero of our story was a man by the name of Hillbert Billy Bob, a dude given great gifts after being bitten by a radioactive homeless man. He could throw himself at great speeds while curling himself into a ball. He was the man known as the Pinball, a force of good in the dastardly city of New Boston, a cyberpunk city where the Yakuza and Mafia call their home. While Hunjuku Japan and Big Italy had their own sections of the city, Jiggle Street and Diamond City played their own role into making New Boston what it eventually turned out to be. The villain of the story was the Kirkinator, a test-tube clone of the late Charlie Kirk who could turn others into Charlie Kirk using his blood. His goal was to turn to whole city into Kirk’s in order to carry the flame, honor the gospel, and fight for his name. The story was stupid as fuck, but we had a hilarious time playing the game. As mentioned before, Riley and Eric had never played a TTRPG before, so at first, we had a rough start, but they were both able to get into it, and we entered a flow state where ideas kept bouncing off of each other left and right. Eventually, we had a deep lore that explained everything around the city. We haven’t finished it yet, but from what we have played, we created a narrative that all three of us were invested in using the game’s mechanics, a card flip that determines what actions will take place in the day in the life of the hero. Cards drawn would influence who was in danger, what the danger was, and where it was taking place. It could take place in an area unknown to the hero, or in the hero’s backyard. The actions of the hero were influenced by dice rolls that determined whether or not the person in danger was saved. If the person was saved, the hero’s legacy increased, and he became an icon to the city. If the person died, the hero had to mourn and reflect on his failures to those he swore to protect. As we played, the decisions we made did take an effect on us, and whenever someone couldn’t be saved, we had a moment of silence. This RPG really put us into the shoes of our dedicated roles. I felt like I was affected whenever we created a new piece of lore. I changed and developed over the course of the game depending on what happened. Riley also was affected by his decisions and his role. He wanted to become a change in the city, and so his reactions to the gameplay reflected that. Eric had a fun time being the villain, and crafting lore for his character for sure helped him get more comfortable in the game space than he was at the beginning of the game. As mentioned before, we haven’t finished our run yet, but we are so invested by the story and the mechanics that we have to finish it, and we will, because this game is really good. I give it 4.5/5 stars.
Month: December 2025
Artwork #4 – Sound Effect!
For Artwork #4, I wanted to create a game that would have players experience the work of a sound engineer. Sound Effect!, as the name suggests, is about experiencing the randomness and pressure of creating sound effects on the spot. As someone who sometimes has to make sound effects on the spot, I wanted the players to feel a similar rush, but with an even shorter time limit, letting them experience the need to act fast and rely on their instincts.
For Sound Effect!, everyone brings an instrument of their choice. Each round begins with the group drawing an action prompt. The prompts can be anything from “a door creaking open” to “footsteps” or something conceptual like “a spell charging up.” Once the prompt is revealed, each player has a minute to experiment with their instruments and create a sound effect to the best of their abilities. After the minute is up, the players take turns playing their sound effects. Each performance shouldn’t last more than 10 seconds. They should be brief and convey the idea effectively. After everyone has performed, the group votes on whose sound Effect was the most realistic or convincing. However, you can not vote for yourself. The person who receives the most votes earns one point for that round. After a set number of rounds, the player with the most tally marks wins. If there’s a tie at the end, the tied players do one extra sudden-death round with a new prompt, and everyone else votes to break the tie. This game is meant to be creative. Don’t let rules and prompts limit your creativity. I have created 4 variations of the game for different player experiences. I encourage players to develop more variations of the game to play with friends, using the existing rules as a foundation.
Rules:
- Setup:
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- Each player will either choose an instrument or bring their own. The game comes with a small list of action prompts to help new players get started. You may also add your own prompts at any time. The players will decide how many rounds they want to play.
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- Start of the Round:
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- Draw one action prompt from the list and read it aloud to the group.
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- Prep Time:
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- All players will have one minute to create a sound effect on their instrument that matches the prompt.
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- Performances:
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- After the minute is up, the players will take turns playing their sound effect. Each performance shouldn’t be longer than 10 seconds. Keeping things brief for a faster pace and potentially more rounds.
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- Voting:
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- Once everyone has performed, all players will vote for the sound effect that best matches the prompt. Players cannot vote themselves.
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- Scoring:
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- The player with the most votes will receive one tally mark for that round.
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- Winning:
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- After the final round, the player with the most tally marks wins. If there is a tie, the tied players will play one extra round, and everyone else votes to break the tie.
Game Variations
Each variation uses the standard rules unless stated otherwise below.
- Team Game:
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- Tools Allowed:
- Standard instruments or any variation of a tool that your group agrees upon.
- Team Making:
- The players may decide how many groups they wish to break into; However, if the number of players exceeds 9, the minimum number of players per group must be 3.
- Prep Time Changes:
- Players are allowed 2-3 minutes per round to compose.
- Performance Changes:
- Teams must play together rather than focus on individual performance.
- Each team will be allowed up to 20 seconds.
- Players are allowed to layer, alternate, or blend sounds; however, everyone must have played at the same time at least once.
- Voting Changes:
- Each player may award a different team a point in each category
- Clarity: Was the concept clear in the team’s performance?
- Creativity: Was the performance unique and creative?
- Teamwork: Was the team coordinated?
- The team with the most points wins, and the game continues.
- Each player may award a different team a point in each category
- Tools Allowed:
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- Random Objects:
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- Tools Allowed:
- Players may not use instruments. Each player will use an everyday random object, ie, keys, cups, pencils.
- Voting Changes:
- Players will vote for the sound that is most creative and convincing rather than strictly realistic.
- Tools Allowed:
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- Instrument Swap:
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- Tools Allowed:
- Any instrument or object brought by the players.
- At the start of each round, players will place their instrument/object in the center and select a new instrument. Each player must choose one they are not confident in.
- Prep Time Changes:
- Players are allowed 2 minutes to learn their new instrument and create a sound effect for the prompt.
- Voting Changes:
- As players are new to their instruments, they will vote for the player that they deem creative and intuitive.
- Tools Allowed:
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- Scene Maker:
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- The goal of this variation is not to compete but to create a scene with all the players. A player will pick a prompt and be the first to start playing a rhythm or sound, keeping it short and replayable. The next player will join with a new sound to help add another layer to the prompt, the next will do the same, and so on until everyone has played. The goal is to create/make the scene of the chosen prompt together. There is no winner or loser; it is about creating something together.
- Rules:
- One player chooses or draws a prompt for the round.
- That player starts by playing a short, repeating rhythm or sound inspired by the prompt.
- After a few seconds, the next player will join by adding a new layer to the sound while the first player continues to play.
- Players will continue to join one at a time until every player has performed together.
- The goal is to create a scene that represents the prompt together.
Example Prompts
- Easy (Clear and Simple):
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- Walking
- Running
- Knocking
- Jumping
- Turning around
- Opening something
- Closing something
- The motion of dropping downward
- Sliding
- Shaking
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- Medium (Interpretive):
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- A person starting to fall
- Something sneaking up
- A sudden surprise
- Stumbling forward
- A slow build in tension
- Losing balance
- Heavy footsteps approaching
- Something wobbling
- A short burst of energy
- Someone waking up gradually
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- Hard (Conceptual)
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- A spark of inspiration
- A spell is charging up
- A sense of dread creeping in
- Something malfunctioning
- A chase scene beginning
- Calm turning to chaos
- Transformation
- A dramatic reveal
- A plot twist
- A powerful entrance
Iterations
For my first iteration, I only used the base version of the game. Everything was going as planned, but I noticed the original time allotted to the player to perform was too long. The 20 seconds were too much time for players to fill within the allotted time for practice. The voting system was also a bit strange, since the classmates who weren’t playing still participated. This created a few confusing situations, requiring us to rescore the results. Some of the prompts seemed a little too difficult for the game. After the first playtest, my professor and I agreed that the goal of making the game feel chaotic and random was a good one.
For the second iteration, we tried switching instruments around to add even more confusion and chaos to the game. Everyone agreed to use an unfamiliar instrument. The game turned even more chaotic, but that was the point. This version turned out to be more fun than the original. This was the inspiration for one of the variations listed above.
After both iterations, I decided to create more variations for the game. I wanted to emphasize that the original version was only the starting point for creativity. I ended up designing four variations: Team Game, Random Objects, Instrument Swap, and Scene Maker. Each one explores a different way to play the game, either by increasing chaos, encouraging people to work together, or pushing players’ creativity in a new direction. This was the point where I decided that the players should build their own variations using the core rules as a standardized base. This is an ever-growing game.
Below are videos from the playtesting!
Link to the game document: Sound Effect!
Artwork #4: Drum Hardware Malfunction
For my final project, I made a rhythm game with a custom controller. Notes move vertically down the screen in two columns in a similar format to Guitar Hero. The player must press a button corresponding to each column once a note hits a baseline. Pressing the button too early, too late, or not at all will negatively impact the player’s score. A snare drum sound is made when the left button is pressed, while the right button plays a bass drum sound. A servo on the controller will activate at random times, pulling a string that in turn pulls the wire connecting the controller to the game. This wire has a magnetic tip, meaning the USB-C tip plugged into the controller can be magnetically separated and reattached to the rest of the wire. When the servo pulls on the string, the wire’s tip breaks off, severing the connection between the controller and the game. To continue hitting notes in the game, the player must reattach the magnetic tip to the wire, which involves twisting the servo back into its original position. The player’s goal is to get the highest score they can, but a perfect score is nearly impossible due to the self-disconnecting controller. You can watch gameplay here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fjpv5TO64HvtH2-Xw-vm0T13uW-cstFb/view
My primary inspiration for this project comes from my numerous experiences playing drum kits, both acoustic and electric, that fall apart during play. These situations range from a bass pedal shifting out of place to an entire electric drum kit frame splitting in half and collapsing (though fortunately, the latter has never happened during a performance (knock on wood!)). In a scenario similar to my game’s controller, an older electric kit that I played with had a module that would unplug upon slight movements, causing it to stop taking inputs and producing sound. Essentially, whenever I’m playing a drum kit, I have to worry about it falling apart as I play: maintaining and fixing the kit on the fly has become a part of the challenge of playing the drums, just as much as skills like playing the right notes and keeping in time. I was also inspired by Chris Burden’s “Samson,” in which museum visitors contribute to the building’s potential collapse by passing through a turnstile to view an exhibit, and the instrument-destroying performances of The Who, themselves inspired by Fluxus artist Robin Page’s “Guitar Piece.”
Artwork #4: Mega Awesome Lion Cafe
Over the past summer, I travelled to Japan for a dialogue with Northeastern University. On that trip, I learned many new words, experienced authentic Japanese culture, and tried many, many different foods. It was a great experience and one that I would definitely recommend to others. One thing, however, that I tried on this trip made me slightly concerned. In Japan, there are many questionable concepts around the country. One of them are these small places called pet cafes. Basically, as the name suggests, these pet cafes are places where customers can come in and hang out with many different animals. A lot of these places involves relatively domesticated animals such as kittens, puppies, and piglets. These animals roam around an enclosed area and come up to customers to give them a great time.
I went to a cafe with pigs, and the tiny piglets were adorable, but the one thing that concerned me the most appeared as my friends and I searched for a pet cafe to go to. One of the top results on our Google Search was an otter cafe. An OTTER Cafe. Remember how earlier, I had said that most of the cafes had relatively domesticated animals that you could find in your home. Well, otters are anything but that. While cute, they are animals who are meant to be swimming in rivers and exploring forests, not sitting inside a small room with tens of strangers. And on top of that, once the cafe is closed for the day, where do these otters sleep? How do they have enough room to sleep and is there habitat accommodating for otters. The answer is probably not. A lot of pet cafes, as it turns out, do not have the safest or most humane living conditions for their animals. A lot of them live in tiny cages where movement is limited, and they can often be starved to make them seem small and cute. While we were appalled by an otter cafe, we also found owl cafes, capybara cafes, and many other questionable places. It made me wonder “How can all of these places keep up with the competition while also accommodating for their animals?” Businesses are known for cutting corners whenever they can, especially when it comes to beating out their opponents, and so I wanted to explore that in a game.
Mega Awesome Lion Cafe was my idea for my Artwork #4. This game involves becoming the owner of a new lion cafe and choosing whether to prioritize taking care of your lions or maximizing your profits, but not both. The gameplay involves managing your business through several different means. First off, you can manage your individual lions that each come with their own stats, including their name, their gender, their morale, and their star power. Their star power affects how many fans can be generated each year, while their morale affects how many of those fans actually stick around due to how well the lions behave. Each lion also comes with a set care cost that must be paid each year to properly care for the lion. Lions also have a cost to feed, which can be determined by the player. The player can decide how much to feed the lions each year. Feeding a lion more food causes their morale to increase, but is also more expensive, while feeding a lion less food decreases morale but saves the player money. In my playtests that I undertook, at first, players had no trouble feeding their lions the maximum that they could, but once they acquired more and more lions, they had trouble scrolling through each one and feeding them all the way, and so they stopped. This was the exact experience I wanted players to have. I wanted the number of lions to be so overwhelming that the more lions a player had, the more lions suffered while also the more money was generated.
Along with managing lions, players can also buy lions from a black market. These lions are generated, and at first, only lower-level star power lions could be bought, but as the game progressed, players could buy a professional hunter that could go out into the Savannah and hunt higher star power lions. But the black market is not the only way to acquire more lions. Once a player has two lions of different genders, they can be bred to make a lion kitten, which the player could name themselves. This breeding system allowed for players to acquire lions at no extra cost, but because there was no cost, players could create as many new lions as they wanted, which added to experience of overwhelming players with the number of lions they had in their cafe. I wanted them to realize that there was not an easy way to take care of them AND make money, and it was evident in my playtests that I did a decent job at that.
Another system I integrated into the game was an upgrade system that could be used to upgrade the cafe and several different ways. These upgrades gave certain buffs to the player/lions, while also negatively impacting certain aspects as well. For instance, players could invest in premium food for either the lions or the customers. If the player chose the lions, lion morale would increase, but customers would then get worse food and would therefore pay less to the cafe. On the other hand, if players, decided to purchase premium food for customers, customers would pay more money, but lion morale would go down. These types of choices influence how a player played the game, and through my playtests, I found that these decisions were not easy to make. All of these systems combined to create an experience that taught players the ups and downs of owning one of these pet cafes, but I found through feedback that it also taught players to dirty side of business, where cutting corners and taking shortcuts usually leads to someone or something being hurt. Overall, I believe I did a decent job at executing my idea and creating a relevant experience for players.
Artwork #4: Out of the Loop
My game, Out of the Loop, is meant to invoke that feeling of when a group of people are talking about something, but you missed the starting context so you try to understand as the conversation goes on. To achieve this. in Out of the Loop, one player is left out of the conversation. The other players (the Cluers) secretly share a word, hint “cryptically” to each other, and choose a clue. The Guesser overhears everything and tries to figure out the secret word and what the others were even talking about.
Inspirations:
I often gravitate to simple games, since I feel they are the most impressive when they truly convey a message or experience, and that is what I tried to channel for this game. Games such as Marriage or many Mary Flanagan works, are so simple yet convey their experiences so effortlessly.
Rules:
Players:
- Minimum: 3 players
- Roles per round:
- 1 Guesser
- 2 or more Cluers
- As your group size increases, add more Cluers, but there is always exactly one Guesser.
Scoring:
- Earn points cooperatively as a team.
- Start at 3 points
- Reach 10 points & You all win!
- Drop to 0 points & You all lose
- Or, play without scores, if that is more fun for you group.
Setup:
- Choose a starting Guesser.
- All other players become Cluers for this round.
- Shuffle and pull one Word Card.
Playing:
1. Reveal the Secret Word
- The Guesser draws the top Word Card, placing it on their forehead, WITHOUT looking at it.
- All Cluers can now see the secret word.
- Cluers silently read the word and begin to speak “cryptically”.
- Example secret word: Pig
2. Cluers Speak “Cryptically”
- Each Clue Giver thinks of one descriptive word related to the secret word. BUT they cannot say this clue out loud yet, because the Guesser is listening.
- Instead, each Cluer gives the group a cryptic hint about their clue, for example:
- “My word starts with B and ends in N.” (intending bacon)
- “Mine starts with P and ends with K.” (maybe pork… or pink)
- Cluers must follow these rules:
- They may NOT reveal their full clue outright.
- They must NOT say anything that contains or spoils the secret word.
- Their hint should be clear only to the other Cluers, not the Guesser.
- All discussions happen out loud, the Guesser listens and tries to understand.
3. The Group Chooses One Clue:
- After everyone presents their cryptic hint, the Cluers discuss (still publicly) and agree on one of the intended clue words to say out loud.
- Only the chosen word will be spoken directly.
- Example: The group picks Joe’s intended clue word: “bacon.”
- This is the only clue the Guesser receives.
4. The Guesser Makes One Guess
- The Guesser hears the chosen clue (e.g., “bacon”) and gets exactly one guess at the hidden word.
- The group scores a point if the guesser got it right and loses a point if the guesser gets it wrong!
5. Rotate Roles
- After scoring, the Guesser passes the forehead card to the center, and the next player clockwise becomes the new Guesser.
- Start a new round with a fresh card.
Testing:
I tested this game in class twice, with success and very minimal feedback, so I didn’t change much. Over the thanksgiving break, I tested it again and added the rule of putting the card on your forehead (to increase the feeling of being left out) and added the scoring (because originally there was no scoring mechanic).
Artwork #4: To Hold on to or Leave behind
For my Express/Experience piece I created an experience art piece that requires players to invite things or moments in their life that they would want to remember or leave behind and choose how they would want to use them in a piece and what the outcomes would be. I reference in this piece a few ideas from Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit, where she wrote prompts for readers to follow and gives them the options of what to do with the end result of the action they have done.
So, I took the ideas and added them into my artwork. In this piece, I gave players either different color sticky notes or slips of different color paper and asked them to write 3 things they would want to hold onto/remember (such as a memory, physical object, etc.) and 3 things they want to leave behind (again a memory, physical object, etc.). Then the players would randomly scramble the things they came up with into two piles. Once the prompts are mixed players would randomly choose one from the hold on to pile and one from the leave behind pile and then in 5 mins have to figure out a way to merge the two ideas into a drawing piece. After having the physical piece, players would then decide what they would want to do to the piece. Given the option to either discard the piece, hold on to it, or leave it behind somewhere. The goal for this piece, who to see the outcome of what players had drawn and what they would want to do with it, showcasing if they are willing to leave things behind or hold on to them.
During playtests, I ran two different iterations of the game, for this one I allowed for players to scramble all every sticky note and create drawings based on the random choices they got from the two piles. Then after having the two prompts, each player had 5 mins to draw a piece combing the two ideas into one. Which was done on whiteboards, making it easier to see the work done, however the last prompt to do something with the piece, wasn’t really possible since it was done on a whiteboard and all you could really do was erase the drawing.
In class playtest
Which is what I changed in the final playtest. I ran this piece again, but this time had it where the players would work based on their own prompts they wrote and at the end would decide what the outcome for their piece would be. For these pieces, player 1 drew the prompts of leaving behind their dorm room and holding on to being passionate, which came out in their drawing to be setting their dorm room on fire. Player 2 in a similar vein drew their prompts of leaving behind a badly ended relationship and to hold on to their sanity, which came out in their drawing as a candle burning a calendar of that marked off the last date they had with that relationship. Lastly, player 3 drew the prompts of leaving behind being rageful and holding on to their Nintendo switch, resulting in their drawing to be themself ripping their switch down the middle.
Player 1 Player 2 Player 3
After they created their drawings, I then asked them what they wanted to do with said drawings. For the breaking switch drawing, the player had crumbled up their piece and threw it away in the trash. As for the other two, they wanted to hold on to the drawings. When I asked each player why they wanted the outcome they came up with for the drawings. Player 1 said they wanted to keep it as a reminder to get their finals done as a form of motivation that they will leave that horrible dorm they hated. As for Player 2, they wanted to keep their drawing also as a reminder to not go out with terrible men. And for Player 3, they threw their piece away because they didn’t want a reminder of the anger they once had and fully chose to leave it behind. Looking back I find it interesting how at least during this playtest, that when it comes to having the choice to hold on/leave behind something regarding themselves, player is more likely to leave it behind easily, as of something that involves someone/something else outside of one’s self, players were more inclined to hold on to it based on it being a reminder to not have it happen again. Somewhat like a lesson they are willing to keep with them.
Outcomes:
Player 1 Player 2 Player 3
Artwork #4: Express/Experience – Final Presntation
The idea of my pitch would be that 6 or more players will draw two cards in clockwise order containing two unique/unrelated statements. Players must try to combine those statements into 1 sentence and communicate that to their teammate who sits directly across from them. Once everyone is ready, all the players will yell their statement all together and each group must try to figure out what their partner said. If they can interpret part of the sentence that was told to them they get 1 point, if they figure out the entire message they get 2 points. However, if they mention something that another player said as part of their guess, then that group gains a point (or two if they interpreted their message). Each player may get 15 seconds to decipher what was said and then must write down their guess on paper. Then players will go around sharing their answers to see who was able to decipher correctly. The piece was inspired by my previous project of only speaking Portuguese for a set amount of time and not being able to use any translation tools (which was inspired by the Uncle Roy All Around You experiment) thus being a Appropriated version of my previous project where I changed the idea of being players have to communicate to their partner with heavy distractions and ensuring that your partner picks up on your messaging and not another teams message.
The intervention was conducted in the following scenario:
- Dinner Party (Thanksgiving)
- Group of 6 people
- Entire classroom
- 4 people (with loud music playing from everyone’s phone)
After conducting playtests, I found that players really liked the idea of trying to convey a message towards their teammates with a while other teams are doing the same thing. Plus the chaos of having to also state your message and interpret at the same time adds to the chaos of being able to ensure you convey the message properly. I ended up finding that it works for at least 6 players but is better when done in big groups or at parties. Overall, I would say this is my most successful game yet!
Below are some images of the cards that were made and a playtest conducted with the entire class (including the grandmaster):
Experimental Game Design Sentences for Game
Artwork #3 – Continue the Sentence
For this intervention, I was originally considering something more political and protest-oriented, and I had some provocative ideas on how to piss Northeastern off, such as having a cutout of President Aoun and having people “decorate” him. I had trouble strategizing, though, as I was in fear of sending the wrong message or getting in trouble with Northeastern admin. I liked the idea of having people contribute to something anonymously without me overseeing them directly, but I didn’t want to put myself or other people in danger. So I decided to settle on an exquisite corpse activity where I set up a bulletin board in a public space and have people add a word to continue a sentence. I was inspired by performance art pieces from Yoko Ono, as well as the Dada collage pieces, and I wanted to incorporate that into a public setting, but anonymously.
I ran a playtest in Snell Library in the evening, with the hopes of getting people coming in and out of the door. It was midterms season, so there was a decent amount of foot traffic at the entrance. I debated whether I should have asked permission from a librarian to put it up, but I decided it would be more interesting if I did it without permission. My friends Dustin and Carlos were there to assist me. We grabbed a small table and placed it at the entrance gate near some other display items from the library itself. Once set up, we added some sticky notes, starting the sentence off with “Once upon a time” and then left the bulletin there for people to hopefully contribute.
Immediately after we set it up, I saw a woman approach behind me, and she snapped a photo. From glancing at her nametag, I saw she worked for the Library, and I noticed her walk back to the help desk, located just to the left of my setup. I was worried she knew I had set it up, but she never approached me. Relieved, I set up camp to keep a watchful eye on the piece from a spot far away.
The initial setup
The first 30 minutes pass, and only one person had actually added a sticky note to the piece, although some other people took notice. I noticed that the foot traffic was mostly directed to the left and right, where the stairs and the study tables were located, respectively. Most people wouldn’t even glance remotely in the direction of the piece, which bothered me. It was ironic because that’s where the library put their displays, which meant that they weren’t really good at catching people’s attention. So I decided to move the piece near the exit, where a lot of foot traffic was located. I waited until the lady wasn’t looking, and I moved the piece right next to the exit.
The new location of the piece near the exit. More people started noticing
Sure enough, lots more people started noticing and writing more sticky notes on the board. There were 5 responses immediately after I moved it. However, this didn’t last long, as the lady came back and started freaking out about the piece. After a period of deliberation, she told the students who worked for her to move the piece back to its original location, and to keep a watchful eye over it. She seemed confused on the legality of such a piece; on one hand, it wasn’t actively offending anybody, but at the same time, it wasn’t authorized to be there. It was really entertaining to listen to them from far away.
The final status of the piece. One complete sentence on the left and a half-formed sentence on the right
Ultimately, I think the piece could have used another iteration, because once the sentence was completed by someone, it didn’t continue onward. I think people want to add something that they think is meaningful, and if they can only add a word to the sentence like “the” or “and”, it really doesn’t feel worth the effort. If I were to continue this, I would definitely consider making a rule to keep the sentence going to avoid ending punctuation. And I think I would start with a more ridiculous prompt to hook people in from the get go. But this made me realize how important the aesthetics and the placement of an intervention piece is. Especially when you aren’t manning it, it sometimes takes extra effort to garner the same amount of attention.
Lost Buddy
Given that I am graduating this semester I knew that what I really wanted to work on would involve grief. Especially since it feels like I am saying goodbye to a lot of my closest friends. I met a lot of people that I really cherish here at Northeastern and I think I went through a small version of the stages of grief where I have not fully processed the loss of everyone yet given that I am still on campus but I am already very aware of the effects that I will experience once I am fully gone. It wasn’t until this semester that it has truly clicked that I am gone after this and I will realistically lose touch with a lot of the people here which is such a shame but also I think part of the reason that processing the feeling of companionship and love are worth feeling at all. To this extent I knew I wanted to do something like marriage where I wanted to present the concept of an idea like grief and similarly to the game and the feeling of grief I want it to be ambiguous until a certain point. I know marriage very early on tells you the point in the title but my experience similarly does it when it reaches its climax.
Jumping into the premise of my game I started out by initially asking people to leave the room when I pitched my idea to a small group of people and then I would ask those who were not there for the presentation to actually play the game. I didn’t want them to enter the game starting with the concept that they were going to lose their buddy because I thought that then the love might be disingenuous to the actual experience that I was going for. People don’t begin to make friends with the thought that they are eventually going to lose them. I would actually be really interested to see what that would look like but that’s not what I was going for. I wanted to present the concept of someone you love being suddenly lost. I did get some feedback that I still think is pretty note worthy like are people going to have enough time to create a bond with an object or would it be better for it to be an object that they already love but if that’s the case how do you represent the aspect of grief without actually taking it away from them. All really good points so I developed three different versions that I would playtest and see which would best represent my goal. I asked people to bring an item that had a strong sentimental value to them, I asked people to make a “buddy” that represented a being that they were really close to and that meant a lot to them and finally I asked the final group to make a buddy that was an item that meant a lot. They would then spend time with their specific buddy doing activities that I thought would present ways to bond with your buddy and bring about closer relationships with all of the players and their buddies.
I had quite a few people playtesting so I will group them here are some of the players bonding with their newly made buddy they had varying time with them
I had varying stories told to me about the buddies that were made hoping that this would expedite the fact that the players would have more affection for their buddies given that some of them are long time friends/favorite foods/favorite extinct animal/most cherished item/ pets/ first item created from a hobby/ a special gift from a loved one. All of these items meant something to the players and I hope that this would make it so that the players would explore the idea that made them love this item and cherish that thing before the next part.
Finally I asked people to return their buddies to me for a while so that I could “use them for the project”. I do think that people suspected that they might lose their buddies but I think what surprised them was the severity of the loss. I sent very gruesome deaths to the players that had returned their buddies to me.
I didn’t show any of them this until after they saw it during the presentation when I had asked one of my players to step up and talk about their experience spending time with their buddies which made it so that it was very gruesome because I thought that it would have the largest impact on the people that created their buddies. A lot of people were very shocked to see the atrocities that had occurred when they participated in my game. I even felt bad as I was really going through the memories that my players had collected and all of the time that they had spent together just to see something that represents something you love be absolutely destroyed in a horrible almost tortuous way. Even the people that hadn’t participated in my game were aghast from the horror of seeing something someone “loves” be destroyed. I had also described to the people that brought me items that meant lots to them the act of me doing horrendous things to their items and they gave me very vivid anger and mournful speeches. I think that makes a lot of sense because these items were irreplaceable unlike the buddies which represented something else. However overall I think people definitely got to experience grief in the way that I was going for so I would definitely consider it a success. I probably wouldn’t run this score or game again because even though I think grief is something that we as humans should be more comfortable with and not necessarily be scared of. I don’t like how heartless it felt to have people forge bonds with something just so I could “take it away” from them. I would absolutely love this game to be continued and expanded upon I dont think it would be me but I would love to see a spin on what I did and some variation that captures the same end goal.
As I mentioned earlier I had some inspiration from marriage for the way that I was executing the concept but the idea of Dys4ia was really nice and although the games themselves are very different the concept or execution I think is pretty similar. I enjoy the fact that it’s the designer putting across their perspective on a certain topic and I wanted to do something similar getting the player to get my perspective not through multiple mini games discussing the topic in various ways but through one long game that makes the player “feel” the experience. I think overall my biggest inspiration was from Blast Theory. I really like a lot of their projects, one of which being Uncle Roy all around you. I like the way that in the midst of what appears to be a fun different game they end up asking serious questions. I wanted to do something that followed that same idea where it appears to just appears to be something more light hearted and fun being the do fun things with this item you love, learn to appreciate it and be more mindful of the time you have with people and aspects of your life because it won’t be that way forever. Then like Uncle Roy I ask the hard hitting question of forcing them to lose this item or thing they love like Uncle Roy asked if you are willing to commit yourself to someone for the next year which I think helps present like the aspect of community and makes people less likely to be depressed or want to take their own lives. Finally I also had some inspiration from Kidnap by Blast Theory. Honestly I could relate my project to a lot of Blast Theory but I specifically like this one for the fact that people were consenting to being kidnapped and they would pay for this “service”. I wanted to attempt something similar with grief but the issue is that I think that loss often comes as a surprise which is what I was going for but I did ask people if they were okay with experiencing some intense emotion which I painted as happiness as in spending time with your buddy. However over all the fact that they made the kidnapping incredibly real to the point where people would ask themselves is this the service I paid for or am I really being human trafficked right now. I would love to go for something similar and have a very serious representation of ask someone to consent to losing someone and then have an extremely realistic sudden death and then bring them back into their life like a month after but again I think very serious issues could arise with that but I would like to see something like that play out.
UNSPOKEN
The non-verbal artgame UNSPOKEN requires players to convey and understand emotions through restricted body language. The player who expresses an emotion through restricted body movements receives no verbal communication from other players who try to understand what they see. The interpretation results from each performance session will determine how the physical structure develops. The Expressor receives brief control over the game after successful emotion recognition by at least one player so they can purposefully add physical elements to the forming cube. The game introduces random fragment placement when players fail to understand the expressed emotion. All additions made to the structure become permanent. The game records emotional understanding and misinterpretation through the accumulation of fragments which create an unstable or unfinished cube structure. The game lacks any scoring system and winner designation, and players can stop at any point. The game creates a visual representation of how communication affects shape development through time.
The first iteration of the game allowed players to discover non-verbal emotional signals without any established framework. The game required one player to show a selected emotion through limited body movements while the other player tried to understand the expression. The playtesting results showed that players failed to match their intended emotions with the emotions they thought others felt during most attempts. The iteration achieved its goal of creating emotional discomfort through miscommunication, but each play session ended without creating any enduring impact. The system required a mechanism to store ongoing misunderstandings because this need led to the development of physical fragments in subsequent iterations.
Iteration 2 introduced a playable prototype that translated emotional interpretation into physical accumulation. Building on the findings of Iteration 1, this version added fragmented pieces that could gradually form a cube over multiple rounds. When an emotion was correctly interpreted, players gained limited control to place a fragment intentionally; when interpretation failed, fragments were placed randomly. This iteration revealed how misunderstanding did not stop the game but actively reshaped its structure. Emotional alignment became rare but meaningful, while misinterpretation accumulated as visible spatial distortion, clarifying the project’s core mechanic.
The system evolved through Final Iteration into a dependable expressive framework which generated permanent structural changes after emotional interpretation. The system established clear boundaries between its potential cube components while it improved its ability to distinguish between purposeful placement and accidental placement. The system allowed brief control through correct interpretation, but permanent instability resulted from incorrect interpretation. The cube developed through time as an imperfect and frequently incomplete shape which served as a physical manifestation of emotional discrepancies rather than a targeted artistic goal. The system evolved from an emotional prediction test into a unified artgame platform during this iteration.
The references for UNSPOKEN derive from artistic practices which use instructional methods to create conceptual art and process art and expressive games that utilize rules and constraints as their creative elements. The project draws inspiration from Yoko Ono’s Instruction Pieces which establish execution and interpretation as the core elements of art and Sol LeWitt’s Incomplete Open Cubes which guide the project’s cube structure that exists independently of completion. The artwork follows Mary Flanagan’s critical play theory and employs expressive game elements from dys4ia and The Marriage and Walden a game to express personal and social experiences through abstract representations and restricted gameplay.
