I have been making games since January 2013! This is a list of games that I’ve made in reverse-chronological order.
Some of my incomplete prototypes include a board game called “Pravda” about the Russian Olympics, the “Magical Girl Olympics” game, “Selfie Game: The Movie: The Game: Song of My Selfie” (2015-2020), and “Last” (2015), a sound toy/conversation toy about relationships.
You can support my work by buying some of my games on itch.io here and here.
IN ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT OR PLAYTESTING
For the Cartomancy Anthology, a game tentatively titled The Fool’s Fairytale, based on the Fool tarot card from the Major Arcana.
ON HOLD
I am working on a d20-based narrative and role playing game based on the structure of a community radio show episode. It is a collaboration with Michael J. Marcotte, tentatively titled “ICOSAHEDRAL: A Game of Twenty-Sided Stories” and currently in early playtesting.
COMPLETED PROJECTS
2022.
February 2022: Cadences: The Story of a Distance and Its Pair, an asymmetrical storytelling game for two.
2021.
November 2021: Pulling Strings, a game about power and control in relationships, for the Jennifer Ann Group.
2020.
August 2020: The performance-based version of Strangers on the ‘Net. In this Discord-based game, we invite players to roleplay like it’s 1999! in their favourite fandom. Things get messy.
January 2020: Third and Final Dissertation Project complete! Entitled UNLOCK. UNPACK., this is a game that fits entirely into a custom personal item-sized suitcase. Players are presented with three multi-step puzzles. Solving each puzzle gives them access to a question to reflect on and the answers of past players. More documentation on the way!
Global Game Jam 2020: Rest Rest Convalesce! Since I made my first game at Global Game Jam 2013, I have not missed a GGJ. This year, I had top surgery on January 16th, or, a little over two weeks ago. I didn’t want to miss the jam, so I wanted to scope very small. My teammates, Dietrich Squinkifer and Kalervo Sinervo, agreed to my limited schedule and small scope. So, in response to the theme of “Repair”, we made an idle point and click game about recovering from surgery.
2019.
GAMERella 2019: Along with Camerin Cobb and first-time game-maker Ixel Macz (The Moonbeam Dream Team), I designed Awkward Times at Moonbeam Market, a tabletop roleplaying game for 4 creatures and one responsible adult. Inspired by the 2019 theme for the jam, “rumble”, this game plays with hunger and rumbling tummies as the trigger for transformations in the creatures. The creatures also have their own culture: objects that they name directly become cursed, and they must never, ever drop an item – they have to find other ways of disposing of anything that they can’t carry.
Fall 2019: I designed the award-winning nanolarp This Is Fine: An Apocalyptic Networking Event with Jenny Bacon, Allison Cole, and Dietrich Squinkifer for the 2019 Golden Cobra Competition! We won an award for “Best Apocalyptic Game”.
Here is what the Golden Cobra Judges had to say:
“‘Never acknowledge the apocalypse. That would be impolite.’ This Is Fine is the kind of game that so very much inspires us that we invent a new category for it. In this case, a lot of y’all were designing with the end of the world in mind, so we came up with the Best Apocalyptic Game award. This game is the one that best expresses that unique feeling of simultaneously having to bow and scrape in the neoliberal corporate dystopian present and having to live with the knowledge that it’s all so freakin’ pointless because the world is ending. A straightforward, tight design that welcomes new players and lets players play close to home without surrendering them to the crushing terror of it all.”
Here’s how another judge describes the game: “[This is Fine] deals with a very specific intersection between the immanence of the end of the world and the equal immanence of needing to go to work in an empty corporate hellscape. It takes us to a corporate networking event while the *literal apocalypse* is destroying all relevance and context outside. But you REALLY need that job so…. The act structure captures Humans In Denial wonderfully.”
Fall 2019: Wahh!: Babies & Big Kids is a one-page tabletop roleplaying game that I designed in collaboration with Michael J. Marcotte. You can get it here on itch.io!
Fall 2019: Made a silly little prototype to learn PuzzleScript at a FLOP workshop. It’s called ahh, it’s capitalism! — and in it, you feed a hungry, hungry maw.
Spring 2019: In collaboration with ACT Concordia, CREGES (Centre de recherche et d’expertise en gérontologie sociale) and RECAA (Respecting Elders: Communities Against Abuse), I consulted on and co-designed Sandra’s Keys, an escape room about older adult mistreatment for the B/OLD conference.
Fall/Winter/Spring 2018-2019: TRACES is my second dissertation project, and a game about time travel and trans experiences. You can check out more information here, including the trailer, photo documentation, and the source code!
Global Game Jam 2019: This year, for GGJ19, Squinky and I decided to scope very small because of other commitments that we had and the desire to have a less stressful jam. We made a game called called Mx. Dressup: Squinky and Jeka’s Outfit Creator for Dapper Queer Millennials, which you can play here. We won an award for best mess!
2018.
GAMERella 2018: In collaboration with narF and Catherine (a brand new gamemaker), I made TAMAGAMEWORKER, a game about trying to balance work with staying happy and healthy. For this game, I made most of the art assets and the (very annoying game jam-y music), did all of the programming (but narF did the systems balancing), and helped mentor Catherine through the game writing and other aspects of the project!
Summer 2018: I finished my first dissertation game project, a physical-digital hybrid game called Flip the Script!
Spring 2018: I designed but have yet to playtest a nanolarp called “Queer Sleepover Witching Hour“.
Reflective Games Prototype Winter 2018: I made a new nanolarp inspired by improv games called Genres of Thought. The github repository is here.
Global Game Jam 2018: I made a game with queer, trans themes with Dietrich Squinkifer called transgalactica: A Tune Your Own Adventure
2017.
In December 2017, I released a nanolarp called This Just In!
In November 2017, I released a digital edition of The Truly Terrific Traveling Troubleshooter.
Fall 2017: I made a game called #nofilter during GAMERella along with Dietrich Squinkifer, Serena Fisher, and Diana Lazzaro.
Fall 2017: I made a small prototype called A Game to Play With Your Body for the reflective games group.
April 2017: I made this little plant-themed poetry toy using Kate Compton’s Tracery library during the week-long ZU-TAG Workshop – check it out here.
Spring 2017: I made a game in a suitcase with Dietrich Squinkifer called The Truly Terrific Travelling Troubleshooter.
Global Game Jam 2017: I made an ASMR plant-dating simulator entitled rustle your leaves to me softly with Dietrich Squinkifer.
2016.
Fall 2016 Classwork: For my Player Studies class, I designed a game for my spouse which you can join in on here called “The Riddle Promenade.” It’s a Riddle Photography game.
GAMERella 2016: Dietrich Squinkifer, Sarah Fay Girard and I teamed up to make a game called “OPPRESSION OLYMPICS 2K16“…which is almost exactly what it sounds like. It’s a multiplayer game, so grab some friends/enemies/bystanders/etc.
Summer 2016: DRIFT, a week-long creative workshop about Woyzeck, a play about a man who is hired by a doctor to eat only peas and who is going mad as a result. Our session (which was one of many) took place simultaneously in London and Montreal. I participated in Montreal, where our creative output was around eight distinct projects related to one another and working from the same source material. In particular, I spent a lot of time making a mod of Operation (the board game) in collaboration with (well, everyone there but in particular) Tony Higuchi.
Winter 2016 classwork: I made two game prototypes. Earth Twin (a game about chatting with your doppelganger from Kepler) and ONE MONTH IN THE LIFE (a game about what it was like in the month leading up to my partner leaving for RCMP training and how cats are oblivious to human drama).
Global Game Jam 2016: “Most Sincere Greetings, Esteemed One” – I teamed up with Dietrich Squinkifer, an awesome game designer and friend, and we quickly settled on a performative game about the rituals of greeting called, Most Sincere Greetings, Esteemed One. You can watch a gameplay video , or play an adapted version without all the props in your browser.
2015.
Christmas 2015: The Real Magical Girls of Collingwood, a Fiasco playset that you can download here Real_Magical_Girls_of_Collingwood. It was a Christmas present for our friend Allison Cole.
Fall 2015 classwork: I made three game prototypes: Cultural Ambassadors (a failed game about defamiliarizing the act of shooting), Rita Hayworth Isn’t In This Game (a Brechtian retelling of the end of The Shawshank Redemption), and Lone Wolf Commando Assault (a game about subverting genre expectations in the design of digital spaces).
Global Game Jam 2015: We prototyped Magical Girl Olympics!
2014.
GAMERella 2014: Allison Cole and I adopted Myriam Obin, a first-time gamemaker and jammer (and award-winning animator!) with whom we made Seventy-Eight, a game about deliberately being mediocre to please a system. The title is a reference to pay imbalances across genders. You can play it here. This game marks a big first for me: although I’ve programmed games for myself, this is the first time that I was the lead programmer in a team.
boobjam 2014: In Tune, a game about navigating consent, with Allison Cole and Zach Miller. You can read more about the game on our collective’s website, as well as about its reception.
Critical Hit Prejam 2014: solo game called Apple Rumble featuring mutant apples duking it out in a refrigerator, which I have just put up online on itch.io.
Global Game Jam 2014: FishSport: A Sport for Fish with Jana Sloan van Geest, Nick Kornek, with music from my brother Michael Marcotte.
2013.
December 2013 DTGMA: A Fistful of Wizards with Jana Sloan van Geest and Nick Kornek.
GAMERella 2013: “Eat Dirt!” with Nick Kornek and Jana Sloan van Geest! You can download it on the TAG site.
Critical Hit 2013: “Assembling Rosie” is the game prototype that I made with Charlotte Fisher and Andy Lunga.
Here is an interview about the game on CBC Quebec AM.
Spring 2013: “Nitrogen Narcosis”! It’s a game with user-enforced rules that you are supposed to actually, in real life, wear Scuba Diving gear to play. The internet (Kongregate users) hates it, but it was very well-received in the context of its creation, which was for Pippin Barr’s Curious Games Studio. It was a games’ course about making games that “tease rather than please” and other quite interesting criteria about what games can be like when we’re not just looking to give the player instant gratification.
Pixelles Incubator 2013: “Diver Quest”, the first game I made all by my lonesome. I’m glad that it exists but it also shows me how much I learned in a very short period of time.
Global Game Jam 2013: “Legacy,” for GGJ2013. I was a part of a team of five that included Charlotte, who I would go on to make “Assembling Rosie” with!