The 9th WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 13th & Sunday November 14th 2021 starting at 1pm EST both days!

FREE

Watch on our Twitch Channel

What an incredible time of the year! We’ve been waiting for this one for a very long time. We’re so happy and excited to be able to put together another event for everyone a fan of narrative games alike! This year we’re following the same format of being nice and safe online, so you can enjoy the festival while wearing your pajamas! We want to thank the community, friends of Hand Eye Society, the land we stand on, as well as our sponsors, Hand Eye Society members and staff who have worked tirelessly for the past few months to make this event possible, not only for free, but to also be able to support exhibitors for their work!

Well that’s it from me, look at these games! Play them! Buy them! Support the creators! Get cozy and listen to some talks! We got you! Stay safe and we’ll see you at WordPlay this weekend on our Twitch channel!

Games~

Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance

Rocket Adrift

Toronto, Ontario

Twitter | Steam |

Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance is a dating sim about a teen girl who moves to a small secret community of cryptids. Romance a magical Fairy, a sensitive Sasquatch and a bold Velociraptor. A satirical 90’s teen drama about trying to find love in your last year of high school.

Milton Summons the Devil

Gus Fuss Games

Brooklyn, NY

Itchio | Twitter |

You are Milton, a nine year old boy. You must search your house for the ritual items scattered everywhere throughout the house so you can summon the devil and kill your gym teacher. Just don’t wake up your parents or anger the devil!

Clam Man 2: Headliner

Marafrass/Team Clam

Canada

Marafrass | Team Clam | Steam

A combatless stand-up comedy RPG where jokes are loot and the boss fights are comedy shows. Under the sea. With fish people.

Frantic Fantic

Zeekayart and Michael

Toronto, Ontario

Twitter | Zeekayart | Website

A hilarious free-to-play creative writing party game where friends furiously write each other’s fanfiction. A round-robin style story game that is played like exquisite corpse but with words instead of pictures!

The Hayseed Knight

Maxi Molina (SandraMJdev)

Spain

Twitter | Steam

Join a ragtag band of misfits as they piece together how Ader, a one-eyed farmboy with seemingly impossible dreams, becomes the most celebrated knight the kingdom of Acazhor has ever known.

Divide Et Impera

Mauro Vanetti & Open Lab

Pavia + Florence, Italy

Mauro | Open Lab | Itchio | Pino | Pietro 

You: A disingenuous political leader keen on using some good old hate speech to further your aims.

Your Goal: Splitting your community in half, by detaching at least 12 people from the interconnected grid of 5×5 people.

Your Weapon: You have to choose hateful contents to post online and a specific target of 3×3 people for each post.

CW: Strong Language

Over Easy: A Diner Heist

Julian K. Jarboe

Salem, Massachusetts, USA

Twitter | Website | Itchio | Play

You and your crew are regulars at the local diner. This evening, the driver of a certain scrapyard truck will make a final pit stop at the diner before hauling away the remains of your neighborhood’s beloved, unique, and weird old landmark. Unless, of course, you and your crew can snatch it back.

Read The Room

Blah Books Studio

Chicago, IL

Devin | Devin’s IG | Jess | Itchio

Doors are locked and Grandma is missing! People are confused and you can read their minds somehow! What’s going on!?

Karen: An Outrage Simulator

Vagabond Dog

Toronto, Ontario

Twitter | Steam

You are Karen – Argue your way through ridiculous scenarios, and get everything you rightfully deserve in this short comedic game about entitlement.

The Fall and Rise of Sadcock-upon-Avon

Orbis Tertius Games

Lincoln, UK & Berlin, Germany

Twitter | Website | Itchio |

In the fiefdom of Sadcock-upon-Avon, strange things are happening. There are rumours of penises not looking or acting as they should…

CW: Sexual Themes

Union Drive

Matajuegos

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Itchio | Studio | Lunafromthemoon | Leno | PfQ | Trailer

Union Drive is a Latin-American visual novel about workplace unionization. You’ll step into the shoes of a young supermarket worker trying to strengthen the union at their place of work and fight against unjust working conditions.

Throughout the game you’ll build strong relationships with your coworkers and get to know their stories, all while learning organization skills used by real-world union organizers.

Internet Court

Oh, a Rock! Studios

Ithaca, NY

Twitter | Website | Paul | Arglefumph

A live-action courtroom comedy, where YOU are the prosecution, defense and the judge! It’s the year 20XX, and crime can happen anywhere—even in cyberspace.

If someone gets caught writing bad fanfiction or unfriending without due cause, they get hyperlinked directly to… The Internet Court. Where the courtroom is virtual, and trials are livestreamed for the whole world to watch.

Insomniac: The Movie: The Game

Insomniac Film Festival, Insomniac: The Movie filmmakers, and Lina Wu

Toronto, Ontario

Insomniac’s Website | Lina’s Website| Insomniac’s IG| Lina’s IG | Itchio

Insomniac: The Movie: The Game was developed as an interactive choose-your-own adventure experience in accompaniment with Insomniac: The Movie, a collaborative quarantine community cinema project.

In addition to watching the film, it’s also a way to explore the cinema, chat with filmmakers, and explore the fantastical horizons of the youth film community even during lockdown.

Quick Fix

Lawrence Le

Ontario, Canada

Twitter | Itchio

A short visual novel with point-and-click elements. What starts off as a simple errand quickly (d)evolves into a tale of fake currencies, goose sleuths, and caffeine abuse. Rub elbows with the oddball inhabitants of Yorkel and outsmart its cruel, coffee-drinking despot to finally secure some decent internet service.

Glom

Nice Games Club

Minneapolis, MN

Website | Twitter | Ellen | Mark | Stephen | Dale Lynn

You have three minutes to come up with a Glom: Re-write the Phrase, while following the Rule, to best meet the Goal… that’s it!

A romp of rewording regular remarks, for wordsmiths of all ages and skill levels. A tabletop party game from the hosts of the gamedev podcast “Nice Games Club.”

Loopy Lore

Guilherme Bandini and Thi My Nguyen

São Paulo, Brazil & Toronto, Ontario

Twitter | Itchio

Loopy Lore is a co-op storytelling game where friends collaborate in telling a story they know nothing about.

Using the cards and their imagination, players take turns as the narrator, giving shape to their tale. To win, they must work together to reach the ending created during setup.

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs

Strange Scaffold

El Paso, Texas

Twitter | Steam

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs is a first-person open-world comedy adventure game with a very long name. You and your fiancée are the last two human beings left in the universe.

Dogs run airports, along with the rest of society. Deal with alien logic, travel issues, and strange stock photo dogs as you attempt to stay in touch with the person you love, when you both live your lives on the go!

Speakers~

Martin Hanses (he/him)

Itchio

Roleplaying Comedy: Letting the player have the last laugh

In this talk, Martin Hanses goes over his work with the design and philosophy of writing comedy for role-playing games that the player can deliver, rather than be the recipient of.

Based on the work and research done for the stand-up comedy game Clam Man 2, the talk covers a series of techniques and approaches that can be implemented in the writing of most games, with a specific focus on player expression and assuming choice ownership.

Ryan Woodward (he/him)

Itchio | Steam

Cute, Funny, and Sad – Writing on Button City

Button City is a colorful game about a cute fox who tries to save the local arcade in the sky.

In this talk Ryan Woodward goes over how he approached writing for Button City to create a lighthearted comedy experience while also incorporating sad heartfelt moments.

Colton David (he/him)

Oops, All Characters: How to Write a Hundred Different Humans*: A character writing panel

Video games have characters; oftentimes, many characters. From RPG towns full of one-liner
randoms, to visual novels with 30 person main casts, game writers constantly need to fill space
with unique and memorable voices. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, oftentimes pointless –
this panel seeks to share practical ways game writers can harness their brain to produce
characters that stick with players. Many, many characters.
The panel will have a light-hearted, conversational bent to it. Attention will be given to writing
funny characters, in keeping with the comedy theme of Wordplay, while also delving into pulling
deeper emotions from.

Carrie Patel (She/Her)
Game Director at Obsidian Entertainment
Carrie has been writing with Obsidian since 2013, writing and co-leading the Pillars of Eternity
franchise, narrative designing The Outer Worlds, and directing an exciting unannounced project.
Aside from her game writing, Carrie is a published author, having released acclaimed
speculative fiction novels: The Buried Life (2015), Cities and Thrones (2015), and more!

Giselle Francis (She/Her)
Writer at Red Thread Games
Giselle is a writer and game designer, currently working on Dustborn, an upcoming title being
developed by Red Thread Games. Previous to that, Giselle has worked on Project Alina, a
puzzle-action RPG for Microfun Inc. As well, Giselle has also done advocacy work and panels
with Latinx in Gaming.

Cobysoft Joe (He/Him, They/Them)
Writer, Artist, and Composer of Dome-King Cabbage
Cobysoft Joe is the one-man band behind Cobysoft Co. a real (but also fictional) gaming
company that makes the award winning Dome-King Cabbage. Dome-King Cabbage is a visual
novel that takes place within the world of a monster collecting RPG. Joe currently lives in the
Midwest of the United States after having spent three years in Japan teaching English. Joe
spends his spare time making 3D images on his computer and playing with his hamster
Thimble.

Jaclyn Seto (She/Her)
Writer at Respawn Entertainment
Starting her career in the medical field, Jaclyn transitioned from physician’s assistant, to writing
on Apex Legends, carrying with her a unique insight into both fields. An avid fan-fiction writer in
her youth, Jaclyn persisted with her passion, graduating from Vancouver Film School’s
screenwriting program in 2019, then working on Project Alina, a puzzle-action RPG for Microfun
Inc.

Marina Kittaka (She/Her)
Co-Director at Analgesic Productions
marinakittaka.com
Currently working on Sephonie.

Melos Han-Tani (He/Him)
Co-Director at Analgesic Productions
@meloshantani (tiktok)
Currently working on Sephonie.

Host & Panel Organizer
Colton David
Writer at Lo-Fi Games
Colton is a writer and narrative designer based out of beautiful Toronto, Canada. For his day
job, he writes with Lo-Fi Games on the sequel to the hit sandbox RPG Kenshi. In his off-time he
develops games with Bad Pet, notably releasing Devil Express in March of 2020. Devil Express
has gone on to be one of the top 10 highest rated adventure games on itch.io! Currently Colton
is working on Anti, a narrative platformer, with his friends at Bad Pet.

Throughout 2020 we did strategic planning with Currents Group. So we’ve put together a Strategic Plan! You can check it out here. After 12 years of incorporation we’ve been working towards documenting and improving our programming to keep improving, keep tweaking, and pushing ourselves to make the best events we can! That means things like multi-year planning, sponsorship goals, and adapting programming when needed. We’d love to hear your feedback on it and what type of programming you’d like to see from us in the future!

Over the past year and a half, we’ve been moving our programming non-congregational and online. Moving forward, we’ll be keeping our programming online as we feel as a small organization and the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic that it is the best, and safest, option for us to run our programming.

Just as we did last year we’ll be hosting it online on our Discord. The first half of the AGM is open to the public while the second half is closed to Membership. You’re welcome to continue hanging out in the Public channels while the members-only portion takes place. Please use the link below to register for the AGM.

RSVP for HES AGM 2021

Hand Eye Society Discord

Board Nominees

We’re excited to announce our Board nominees for 2021! We’ll be voting on them on the AGM, so if you’re a member give them a look over.

Yifat Shaik

Yifat Shaik is an Assistant Professor in Computational Arts at York University and an indie game developer whose focus is on creating personal autobiographical work and the use of systems, data, and game mechanics in social interaction and political activism. Her work explores the way “play” can become a powerful way to talk about and examine social structures, especially using mechanics as the primary tools of subverting the meaning of well-established video game systems. As an independent game developer, Yifat is currently working on Real Army Simulator, an anti-militarization game about the mundanity of military service, The Mattress of St. Dundas, a game about gentrification in Toronto and The Engine is the Message, a series of small experimental games which are done in nontraditional game engines. Her work has been exhibited and presented internationally in events like MIGS (in which she was keynote speaker in 2018), Indiecade, Full Indie, Qgcon, and more and has received press attention from publications like Boing Boing, The Financial Post, and The Torontoist. Since graduating from OCAD University in 2014,  Yifat has been working as an instructor and course director in such institutions as OCAD University, Sheridan College, The Toronto Public Library and since 2016 she has been a course director (and later Assistant Professor) at York University’s Computational Arts program. Yifat was co-director of Dames Making Games Toronto and is a member of the Different Games Collective and head organizer of Different Games Toronto conference in 2017.

Nick Fox-Gieg

Nick Fox-Gieg is a researcher, animator, and developer in Toronto. Most recently, he’s been working on XR projects for the Verizon 5G EdTech Challenge, NYT T Brand Studio, the University of Waterloo, Google Creative Lab, and Framestore. His awards include a 2017 Engadget Alternate Realities grant, Eyebeam and Fulbright Fellowships, and the jury prize for Best Animated Short at SXSW 2010; his work has also been shown at the Ottawa, Rotterdam, and TIFF film festivals, at the Centre Pompidou, and on CBC TV; his practice has been supported by grants from Bravo!FACT, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the arts councils of Ontario, Pennsylvania, Toronto, and West Virginia. Fox-Gieg holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University.

Maxwell Neely-Cohen

Maxwell Neely-Cohen is a writer based in New York City. He is the author of the novel Echo of the Boom and was Editor-At-Large for The Believer from 2018-2021. When not writing he spends his time making and funding music, games, art, and dance. 

Hand Eye Society’s Twitch Stream Free

November 13th & 14th, 2021

DEADLINE: September 17th 11:59PM

The 9th year of the WordPlay Festival that celebrates the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games is happening, again!

This year’s theme of WordPlay is “Comedy” as in lmao and lol and hahahaha and hehehehe and kkkkkk and wwwww and tee hee and lolololol and jajajajajaja etc etc. If your game can make us do any of that and more, apply!

We’re had such a wild past few months…may I even say year? And one of the things that helps keep us going is something that uplifts our spirits and makes us smile and laugh. It’s a powerful emotion and gives us that oomph that makes most situations bearable. We’re so excited and curious to see ways in which developers this year can make us and the community laugh!

Submit a Speaker Application!

We’re opening up the submissions for speakers! We want you to submit your talk, panel, workshop, round-table, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. If it deals with the subject of interactive fiction and writing in contemporary games, it’ll be right up our alley.

We want to hear about new and innovative ways to combine storytelling, digital media, interactivity, and the craft of writing into potent new forms of creative expression in relation to our comedy theme. What experiments are being conducted to change the face of interactive fiction? In what ways are the boundaries being pushed? We want to know! Take a look at our WordPlay Page see what presentations we’ve put on for past WordPlay festivals. Then check out our Speaker Proposal Form below and submit your idea! Don’t delay, the form is only active until September 17, 2021. Artist fees of $500 CAD will be paid for 1-hour talks and workshops. As WordPlay is entirely online this year some content will be prerecorded based off of the nature of selected speakers.

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Submit a Showcase Game!

Would you like to submit or suggest a showcase game? What we’re looking for are games with exceptional writing or that uses writing in an integral way. Please do so via the form below before midnight on September 17, 2021. You can submit your own game, or a game you feel strongly about. There is no submission fee and Toronto-made, Canadian, and international games are all welcome. We will be selecting between 12 and 14 games from everything entered through the Game Submission Form below. Game creators with games accepted into the showcase will receive an artist fee of $250 CAD. Depending on the nature of submissions, games selected to be in the WordPlay 2021 showcase will either be presented as a pre-recorded Let’s Play to be hosted on our Twitch channel, or be made available for free online for the duration of the festival. We will work directly with artists to figure out the format best suited for their project.

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Volunteer for Wordplay!

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Stay tuned for more announcements coming soon about the showcase jury, workshops and special guests!

About WordPlay

WordPlay is our free one-day festival celebrating the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. Now in our 9th year, we will once again host a curated game showcase, talks by creators about their craft, and ways for the public to try their hand at making games. This year, we are supported by the following organizations:

Let’s just get straight to it! Here’s our Mega-Blog, including all our Speakers, Game Jam Participants, Games, Comics x Games Festival Schedule and more! Support all these incredible people!

Game Jammers!

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Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud

Miss You, Love

Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud is a chronically ill, nonbinary digital media artist of Guyanese and English descent living in Toronto. They create work around embodiment – part of an intentional practice to honour the body. They are particularly interested in drawing connections between micro and macro levels of intimacy, interdependence, and care. Chosen media include: illustration, poetry, and film.

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Camille McIntyre & Ludipe

Bell Bookmark Subscribe

I am a Brooklyn-born artist with a passion for storytelling. Being a curious kid at heart and a scientist in training, I love exploring different ways to make art and to have people interact with that art. I dream to become an expert in drastic measures, bizarre characters, and mind-tingling worlds.

Freelance game designer and occasional event organizer. I release free experimental games pretty often.

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Erica Lee & Kaelan Doyle Myerscough

The Faceless City

A concept artist and illustrator that absolutely loves buying plushies and dreams of becoming a knight. Also, enjoys creating stories and playing games!

Kaelan Doyle Myerscough is a trans/nonbinary critical creator, game designer and academic interested in the theory and praxis of worldbuilding. They make games and organize game jams about speculation, complex collaboration and rethinking the relationship between play and locality. 

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Kelly K & Droqen

Untitled

Kelly K is an illustrator and cartoonist who spends half their time in Toronto and the other half on the net. If they’re not at home browsing the internet (for research), reading comics (for research), or playing RPGs (also for research), they’re most likely drawing OCs or journaling.

Droqen makes beautiful playable gardens! I make frustrating nightmare mountains! I make games and videogames and all sorts of other things.

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Elijah Forbes & Bryan Depuy

B-Sides

Elijah Forbes is a Two Spirit transgender creative who creates content that focuses on life beyond a gender binary, and the lifeways of Indigenous people. He works on the community level to create access to arts education regardless of economic status.

Bryan Depuy (he/him or they/them) is a queer white settler artist, punk, and DIYer. he develops tiny video games, writes speculative fiction, and records very loud music. on & offline, he aspires to balance creative practice with accountability to the people and communities who inspire and challenge him.

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MAY 8TH – 12TH, 2021

ONLINE via Twitch!

Schedule!

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Speakers!

Lina Wu

Website | Twitter

New Ways to Love You

New Ways to Love You explores the legacy of zines as responses to video games, centering pre-existing fanzines and how fan culture influences the creative process. Questions include: How is fan work perceived or misconceived in the arts? What compels us to respond to games with our own narratives and ephemera, and what are we building and expressing together? Do these works function as responses, or do they actually change the way we play and love video games?

Alex Rushdy

Website | Twitter

Bringing Comic Book Monsters to Life

I discuss how to blend 2D and 3D assets, complex shaders, and unique animation workflows to create a unique comic book aesthetic through our upcoming game, Dawn of the Monsters. Our process doesn’t require fancy tech, just fancy technique! I also compare and contrast various approaches to bringing comic books and manga to life on the video game screen and where our approach aligns and differs.

Jedidjah Julia Noomen

Website | Twitter

Words without audio, or how comics taught me to write for voiceless game characters.

When I started out in game writing, I had many years of experience in film, tv and theatre. But the first games I wrote for, had no voice overs… I had to write for (limited) animated characters with text balloons, and suddenly, half of my jokes and nuanced one-liners fell flat, because there wasn’t an actor to give them the right tone of voice. In a bid to learn how to write non-voiced game dialogues, I turned to one of my other favorite story-telling art forms: comics. This is what I learnt.

Geoffrey Golden

Website | Twitter

Now You’re Playing with Panels: The Art of Gamebook Comics

You’re not just a reader with gamebook comics. You’re the hero! Imagine a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, only with panels instead of text blocks, and monsters to battle with dice rolls. We’ll take a look at the legacy of solo comic gamebooks, from the obscure British comic Diceman (1986) to Marvel’s You Are Deadpool (2018). How are these games designed? What elements do they draw from video games, tabletop RPGs, and interactive fiction? Are they fun? Turn the page and find out.

LeeAnne Ireland

Website

Indigenous Storytelling in Comics

In this talk, we will explore how Indigenous teachings, learning and storytelling is a great mechanism to building the foundation of comics, graphic novels and games. The talk will also explore how to incorporate Indigenous processes, parallel ways of knowing and ceremony into the process to ensure it is as meaningful as the end product. Lastly, people will have an opportunity to explore some of the behind the scenes ways that we created our popular graphic novels into virtual reality game experiences.

Sharang Biswas

Website | Twitter

Understand Comics / Understanding Games: Examining Games Through the Scott McCloud Lens

What can comics teach game designers? How are the visual and interactive arts related? In an increasingly interdisciplinary world, studying an art form through the lens of an another, seemingly unrelated field can yield insights and breakthroughs that defy current expectations of art. In this talk, we’ll be examining games and game-design through Scott McCloud’s classic text UNDERSTANDING COMICS.

Bahiyya Khan

Twitter

Environmental storytelling in the absence of context

This talk will focus on how screenshots from vignette video games that rely on environmental storytelling as a narrative device can exist as a comic when placed out of context as well as how the environmental storytelling present in a comic can be transmuted into a vignette video game. The talk also explores the different mediums approach to environmental storytelling with video games looking at player agency and interpretation and comics relying more on traditional exposition.

Sara Alfageeh & Meg McCurdy

Sara’s Twitter | Meg’s Twitter

Sequential Storytelling: A Look At Table-Top Roleplaying games

Sitting with Sara Alfageeh and Meg McCurdy, creative director and lead artist of ONE MORE MULIVERSE.Talking about visual storytelling by game devs with one foot in comics and the other in table top roleplaying games. Looking at how artists bring over storytelling concepts from one to the other. Understanding how visuals allow us to “move at the speed of story”, and what that means.

Games!

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Boy Problems

Boy Problems Productions

It is many years into the future. A wealthy and powerful person (or persons) has claimed a rare and much sought after prize: the “vault” of 200 unreleased (this is real!) songs from renowned Canadian pop artist, CARLY RAE JEPSEN. Hired by an anonymous sponsor, your team of highly trained individuals will raid a well-defended location to retrieve said item. From planning to set-up to execution, you will see this heist through to its completion, whether that be a success or failure. There will many twists and turns along the way, and don’t always trust the specialists by your side.

Time Bandit

Joel Jordon

Time Bandit is a dark life sim where everything you do takes time. Place down a robot to push a box for you, and it will take an actual half an hour to finish. By saving the game and coming back periodically to make progress, you are invited to explore your habits, rituals, and experience of time in general, particularly as it relates to work and exploitation.

Keyword

City From Naught Inc.

Keyword is a near-future cyberpunk 3D detective-thriller game about a private investigator searching for his missing daughter. Players will take on the role of a private investigator and father to an 18-year-old girl, use their observation and deduction skills, coupled with their tech-savviness, hacking around social media accounts and websites in order to unravel the threads surrounding the mystery of the missing daughter.

Questlike: Pocket

Spritewrench Studios

Questlike: Pocket is a mobile, monster-hunting RPG where you battle monsters and craft awesome gear. Get swept up in the Rhythm of the Hunt- Time your attacks to best your fearsome foes and secure your place as the world’s top-ranked Hunter!

Midnight Identity Crisis

Yuen Hoang

“There will always be comfort in knowing that you are comprised of other’s parts- because then, you can never be truly alone.” Midnight Identity Crisis is a multimedia surreal walking simulator, focused on how media, other people, and art influence our identities.

Nell & the Festival of Spooks

Becky Wu

A slice-of-life visual novel about a seemingly ordinary girl named Nell, who has a love for horror. An eclipse transports her to a spooky town where she gets enrolled into a fancy academy!

Saving You From Yourself

Taylor McCue

Play as a therapist and fuck up a perfectly good girl by helping her.

The Hex Perplex

Daniel Narvaez

Welcome to the Hex Perplex! Can you defeat the unstoppable power that lurks among these walls? Master the power of the spell books and vanquish the curse that holds the castle! Use them to fight enemies and alter your terrain! It will surely be a difficult journey!

Bombing!!: A Graffiti Sandbox

Devon Wiersma

Bombing!!: A Graffiti Sandbox is a creative lo-fi sandbox game where every inch of the environment can be painted. Armed with your trusty backpack, a bag full of gear and a selection of tools, take to the streets and fill them with your creations!

GUNPIG: Firepower For Hire

LaPointe Joints

Hop into your teeny tank and blast the Chrysophods…fast, fun, arcade style action! Join alien pest control specialist (and possibly shortest mercenary in the galaxy) Bax Torpini, as he fights to rid Stalwart Academy, a school space station, of a rogue horde of out-of-control robot space monsters!

Pixel Puzzle Makeout League

Rude Ghost

Solve pixel puzzles, date superheroes, and save the day! Dating sim meets puzzle game in this romantic comedy adventure.

START AGAIN: a prologue

insertdisc5

START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: A PROLOGUE (or: START AGAIN: a prologue) is a short rpg where you, Siffrin, are stuck in a time loop for no reason you can find.
You’re fine though! Hiding your knowledge from your friends is easy! Fighting the same enemies is easy! Dying to the same final boss over and over again is easy!
You have to make sure your friends don’t find out about the super fun times you’re having though.
They can’t know.
They can’t.

START AGAIN: a prologue is a story-driven 3-5 hour long RPG made in RPGmaker, and is available on itch.io. It can be played with a keyboard or a gamepad.

Emergent Fates

megaphemeral

Emergent Fates is a Japanese inspired Role Playing Game about finding identity and purpose in a world where your fate has already been decided.

Duskwitch: Heroic Soul

VIVIDBLUE LTD

Duskwitch: Heroic Soul is a fast-paced character action shooter where you play as Rutie, a witch tasked with saving the rest of the world after nearly ending it herself! Using her Broom, she uses soul energy to eliminate Azazoth’s Remnants which are shadows of an ancient evil being that consume human souls. Fight your way through the horde of Remnants and take them out in style!

Garden Story

Picogram

Unify a broken community as the newly-appointed Guardian of The Grove. Traverse a vibrant island to combat invasive Rot, inspire its inhabitants, and rebuild your home. You won’t have to do this alone: fruity friends await, ready to lend a hand!

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In Cold Dark

done \ undone

Three years scouting the distant reaches of the galaxy. You’ve been all on your own, but now it’s time to head back, to SAGI 499: a divided colonial society on the edge of the Sagittarius spiral, and your home. Old friends calling, new faces to meet, political turmoil … and hints of something far stranger. What will you choose?

Shot in the Dark

Possum House Games

Shot in the Dark offers a unique challenge, combining nail biting pixel perfect platforming with precise point and click shooting. But many of the cruel creatures of the night remain hidden in shadow. The bandit will have to be on the lookout for glowing red eyes, shadows moving through the trees, and figures lurking in the night. Because sometimes the only sign of a demon on your trail is the slight movement of the tall grass. And sometimes all you can do is take a shot in the dark.

Facts About the Robot Uprising

Geoffrey Golden, Jordan Robins

Facts About the Robot Uprising is the first new game to be developed for the Tiger 2-XL in more than 25 years. In this trivia challenge, 3-XL (2-XL’s sinister successor) quizzes the audience on why and how robots will enslave humanity. Players who answer 3-XL’s questions correctly get a funny song! Those who don’t will become the first victims of the robot uprising…

flaming/million

Nilson Carroll

A NEW GAME FOUND IN THIS FLAMING DUMPSTER: follow L.C. through a warped glitch campus during the FRATPARADE. destroy the three (3) police surveillance monuments and rid the campus of masculine oppression. use the queer power of glitches and begin to heal this terrible curse put on us all.

The Big Con

Mighty Yell

Flex your inner teenager in The Big Con, an adventure game where you hustle across the country as a teen trying to save your family video store. In classic 90s con movie style, you’ll get to persuade and pilfer your way to greatness using a whack of potential grifts.

Project Snapshot

Dinky Dinos

A casual simulation game where players channel their inner photographer to capture the natural beauty of a remote island for peculiar clients!

Dawn of the Monsters

13AM Games

Dawn of the Monsters is a co-operative kaiju beat-em-up coming in 2021. Players take control of powerful monsters in order to take on the evil “Nephilim”- a horde of creatures that are hellbent on destroying the planet. Liberate four major metropolitan areas- from Toronto to Tokyo in this epic action game.

Shwip

Jamhammer Games

Dominate global leaderboards as you face off against an onslaught of geometric foes. Shwip combines straight up twin-stick arcade action with tight controls, insane pixel destruction and devastating weapons and abilities. Evade, outlast and play with style in four game modes over single and local multiplayer.

Some Like It Hot!

AugEx

Some Like It Hot! is a combination of job simulation and visual novel, where you’ll be crafting complex caffeinated concoctions during the rush hours, and getting to know the regulars during your down time.

Gladiotron

Gavin Ball / Full Circle CS Inc.

Gladiotron is a modern take on Metroidvanias, while not hiding it’s retro inspirations. It is also an online interactive story that follows the adventures of 2 Detroit area high school students as they get wrapped up in a cosmic adventure that will test their faith and resilience as they try to save the galaxy from the intergalactic space demons.

Triversal

Phantom Compass

Triversal is a simply satisfying spatial puzzle game that helps you find your chill. Relaxing and rewarding; Suspend a light orb over the goal by tethering to nearby supports and complete puzzle after puzzle.

Told By Starlight

Ryan Khan

Told by Starlight is a no prep, GM-less tabletop game for 2-6 players. It is about drawing constellations and telling the tales behind them. Using a standard deck of playing cards to generate themes and prompts, you will create an entire mythology, and all the characters within.

Hop Together

Toasty Bread Team

Help bunnies bring carrots up to their friends in this charming little puzzle game.

A Night at Manster Mansion

Onino Zvezdin

Woken in the night by your boss, you must go uncover the murder at the mysterious Manster Mansion belonging to the most ruthless mafia clan in the world. Will you be able to get out unscathed or will you perish like the typical victim of their cruelty?

DepowerBall

Mega Power Games

DepowerBall is a competitive game where the fate of every matchup is influenced by fast-paced gameplay and tactical decision-making. Every match, each player starts with the same set of powers to try and accomplish their task of pleasing the Dragon Queen by feeding her delicious treats! When a player wins a round, he or she will earn the Queen’s favour, but will earn the wrath of the other players as they vote to take away one of the winner’s powers! Adapt to your changing conditions, or get left behind as the other players take advantage of your weakened state!

Recalculating

Blank Slate Games

Think small talk is tough? Imagine if your life depended on it. Recalculating is a soft-thriller visual-novel intended to simulate an uncomfortable position familiar to many women: being in a rideshare vehicle. Navigate your thoughts and choices by launching a ball to select dialogue options that bounce around the screen. In a game with multiple endings and plot twists, can you speak your mind when it really matters? After all, when anxieties heighten, things becomes harder to say… literally.

Bapy

Snotwurm

Adopt and care for an infant demon of your own!

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Our Partners

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Promoter Tier Supporters

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Patron Tier Supporter

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Volunteers

Coordinators: Enna Kim & Sam Cuddy

Erica Coutts, Porter Crease, Kevin Ly, Sonya Tsui, Mobeedah Akhter, Amer Ali Mohammed, Ian Fyfe, Chih-Chieh Chang, Chi Ma, Leif Conti-Groome, Gresa Ago Ago, Jack Chang, Annabelle Wu, Siena Smith, Cass Alvarado, Phoenix Simms, Katelyn Campbell, and Adil Sulaiman.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]Yay! We’re so happy to be able to have this festival to brighten up your week! We want to thank all the Sponsors, Friends, HES Staff, Volunteers and more for making this event happen! We love the Toronto Games Community so much! [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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It’s back and bigger than ever! The Hand Eye Society has partnered once again with the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) and Canzine to announce the return of the Comics x Games festival! This year, due to COVID-19 Comics x Games will be making a return, but with a virtual twist! We can’t wait to be able to showcase the works of more local and international artists at this year’s festival! Here are this year’s festival speakers! Please support them!

MAY 8TH – 12TH, 2021

ONLINE via Twitch!

SCHEDULE TBD SOON!

Lina Wu

Website | Twitter

New Ways to Love You

New Ways to Love You explores the legacy of zines as responses to video games, centering pre-existing fanzines and how fan culture influences the creative process. Questions include: How is fan work perceived or misconceived in the arts? What compels us to respond to games with our own narratives and ephemera, and what are we building and expressing together? Do these works function as responses, or do they actually change the way we play and love video games?

Alex Rushdy

Website | Twitter

Bringing Comic Book Monsters to Life

I discuss how to blend 2D and 3D assets, complex shaders, and unique animation workflows to create a unique comic book aesthetic through our upcoming game, Dawn of the Monsters. Our process doesn’t require fancy tech, just fancy technique! I also compare and contrast various approaches to bringing comic books and manga to life on the video game screen and where our approach aligns and differs.

Jedidjah Julia Noomen

Website | Twitter

Words without audio, or how comics taught me to write for voiceless game characters.

When I started out in game writing, I had many years of experience in film, tv and theatre. But the first games I wrote for, had no voice overs… I had to write for (limited) animated characters with text balloons, and suddenly, half of my jokes and nuanced one-liners fell flat, because there wasn’t an actor to give them the right tone of voice. In a bid to learn how to write non-voiced game dialogues, I turned to one of my other favorite story-telling art forms: comics. This is what I learnt.

Geoffrey Golden

Website | Twitter

Now You’re Playing with Panels: The Art of Gamebook Comics

You’re not just a reader with gamebook comics. You’re the hero! Imagine a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, only with panels instead of text blocks, and monsters to battle with dice rolls. We’ll take a look at the legacy of solo comic gamebooks, from the obscure British comic Diceman (1986) to Marvel’s You Are Deadpool (2018). How are these games designed? What elements do they draw from video games, tabletop RPGs, and interactive fiction? Are they fun? Turn the page and find out.

LeeAnne Ireland

Website

Indigenous Storytelling in Comics

In this talk, we will explore how Indigenous teachings, learning and storytelling is a great mechanism to building the foundation of comics, graphic novels and games. The talk will also explore how to incorporate Indigenous processes, parallel ways of knowing and ceremony into the process to ensure it is as meaningful as the end product. Lastly, people will have an opportunity to explore some of the behind the scenes ways that we created our popular graphic novels into virtual reality game experiences.

Sharang Biswas

Website | Twitter

Understand Comics / Understanding Games: Examining Games Through the Scott McCloud Lens

What can comics teach game designers? How are the visual and interactive arts related? In an increasingly interdisciplinary world, studying an art form through the lens of an another, seemingly unrelated field can yield insights and breakthroughs that defy current expectations of art. In this talk, we’ll be examining games and game-design through Scott McCloud’s classic text UNDERSTANDING COMICS.

Bahiyya Khan

Twitter

Environmental storytelling in the absence of context

This talk will focus on how screenshots from vignette video games that rely on environmental storytelling as a narrative device can exist as a comic when placed out of context as well as how the environmental storytelling present in a comic can be transmuted into a vignette video game. The talk also explores the different mediums approach to environmental storytelling with video games looking at player agency and interpretation and comics relying more on traditional exposition.

Sara Alfageeh & Meg McCurdy

Sara’s Twitter | Meg’s Twitter

Sequential Storytelling: A Look At Table-Top Roleplaying games

Sitting with Sara Alfageeh and Meg McCurdy, creative director and lead artist of ONE MORE MULIVERSE.Talking about visual storytelling by game devs with one foot in comics and the other in table top roleplaying games. Looking at how artists bring over storytelling concepts from one to the other. Understanding how visuals allow us to “move at the speed of story”, and what that means.

OUR PARTNERS

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Patron Tier Supporter

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Promoter Tier Supporters

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It’s back and bigger than ever! The Hand Eye Society has partnered once again with the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) and Canzine to announce the return of the Comics x Games festival! This year, due to COVID-19 Comics x Games will be making a return, but with a virtual twist! We can’t wait to be able to showcase the works of more local and international artists at this year’s festival! And without further ado, here are all the amazing games for this year’s festival!

MAY 8TH – 12TH, 2021

ONLINE via Twitch!

SCHEDULE TBD SOON!

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Boy Problems

Boy Problems Productions

It is many years into the future. A wealthy and powerful person (or persons) has claimed a rare and much sought after prize: the “vault” of 200 unreleased (this is real!) songs from renowned Canadian pop artist, CARLY RAE JEPSEN. Hired by an anonymous sponsor, your team of highly trained individuals will raid a well-defended location to retrieve said item. From planning to set-up to execution, you will see this heist through to its completion, whether that be a success or failure. There will many twists and turns along the way, and don’t always trust the specialists by your side.

Time Bandit

Joel Jordon

Time Bandit is a dark life sim where everything you do takes time. Place down a robot to push a box for you, and it will take an actual half an hour to finish. By saving the game and coming back periodically to make progress, you are invited to explore your habits, rituals, and experience of time in general, particularly as it relates to work and exploitation.

Keyword

City From Naught Inc.

Keyword is a near-future cyberpunk 3D detective-thriller game about a private investigator searching for his missing daughter. Players will take on the role of a private investigator and father to an 18-year-old girl, use their observation and deduction skills, coupled with their tech-savviness, hacking around social media accounts and websites in order to unravel the threads surrounding the mystery of the missing daughter.

Questlike: Pocket

Spritewrench Studios

Questlike: Pocket is a mobile, monster-hunting RPG where you battle monsters and craft awesome gear. Get swept up in the Rhythm of the Hunt- Time your attacks to best your fearsome foes and secure your place as the world’s top-ranked Hunter!

Midnight Identity Crisis

Yuen Hoang

“There will always be comfort in knowing that you are comprised of other’s parts- because then, you can never be truly alone.” Midnight Identity Crisis is a multimedia surreal walking simulator, focused on how media, other people, and art influence our identities.

Nell & the Festival of Spooks

Becky Wu | Website

A slice-of-life visual novel about a seemingly ordinary girl named Nell, who has a love for horror. An eclipse transports her to a spooky town where she gets enrolled into a fancy academy!

Saving You From Yourself

Taylor McCue

Play as a therapist and fuck up a perfectly good girl by helping her.

The Hex Perplex

Daniel Narvaez

Welcome to the Hex Perplex! Can you defeat the unstoppable power that lurks among these walls? Master the power of the spell books and vanquish the curse that holds the castle! Use them to fight enemies and alter your terrain! It will surely be a difficult journey!

Bombing!!: A Graffiti Sandbox

Devon Wiersma

Bombing!!: A Graffiti Sandbox is a creative lo-fi sandbox game where every inch of the environment can be painted. Armed with your trusty backpack, a bag full of gear and a selection of tools, take to the streets and fill them with your creations!

GUNPIG: Firepower For Hire

LaPointe Joints

Hop into your teeny tank and blast the Chrysophods…fast, fun, arcade style action! Join alien pest control specialist (and possibly shortest mercenary in the galaxy) Bax Torpini, as he fights to rid Stalwart Academy, a school space station, of a rogue horde of out-of-control robot space monsters!

Pixel Puzzle Makeout League

Rude Ghost

Solve pixel puzzles, date superheroes, and save the day! Dating sim meets puzzle game in this romantic comedy adventure.

START AGAIN: a prologue

insertdisc5

START AGAIN: a prologue is a story driven RPG where you, Siffrin, are stuck in a time loop for no reason you can find. You’re fine though! Hiding your knowledge from your friends is easy! Fighting the same enemies is easy! Dying to the same final boss over and over again is easy! You have to make sure your friends don’t find out about the super fun times you’re having though. They can’t know. They can’t.

Emergent Fates

megaphemeral

Emergent Fates is a Japanese inspired Role Playing Game about finding identity and purpose in a world where your fate has already been decided.

Duskwitch: Heroic Soul

VIVIDBLUE LTD

Duskwitch: Heroic Soul is a fast-paced character action shooter where you play as Rutie, a witch tasked with saving the rest of the world after nearly ending it herself! Using her Broom, she uses soul energy to eliminate Azazoth’s Remnants which are shadows of an ancient evil being that consume human souls. Fight your way through the horde of Remnants and take them out in style!

Garden Story

Picogram

Unify a broken community as the newly-appointed Guardian of The Grove. Traverse a vibrant island to combat invasive Rot, inspire its inhabitants, and rebuild your home. You won’t have to do this alone: fruity friends await, ready to lend a hand!

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

In Cold Dark

done \ undone

Three years scouting the distant reaches of the galaxy. You’ve been all on your own, but now it’s time to head back, to SAGI 499: a divided colonial society on the edge of the Sagittarius spiral, and your home. Old friends calling, new faces to meet, political turmoil … and hints of something far stranger. What will you choose?

Shot in the Dark

Possum House Games

Shot in the Dark offers a unique challenge, combining nail biting pixel perfect platforming with precise point and click shooting. But many of the cruel creatures of the night remain hidden in shadow. The bandit will have to be on the lookout for glowing red eyes, shadows moving through the trees, and figures lurking in the night. Because sometimes the only sign of a demon on your trail is the slight movement of the tall grass. And sometimes all you can do is take a shot in the dark.

Facts About the Robot Uprising

Geoffrey Golden, Jordan Robins

Facts About the Robot Uprising is the first new game to be developed for the Tiger 2-XL in more than 25 years. In this trivia challenge, 3-XL (2-XL’s sinister successor) quizzes the audience on why and how robots will enslave humanity. Players who answer 3-XL’s questions correctly get a funny song! Those who don’t will become the first victims of the robot uprising…

flaming/million

Nilson Carroll

A NEW GAME FOUND IN THIS FLAMING DUMPSTER: follow L.C. through a warped glitch campus during the FRATPARADE. destroy the three (3) police surveillance monuments and rid the campus of masculine oppression. use the queer power of glitches and begin to heal this terrible curse put on us all.

The Big Con

Mighty Yell

Flex your inner teenager in The Big Con, an adventure game where you hustle across the country as a teen trying to save your family video store. In classic 90s con movie style, you’ll get to persuade and pilfer your way to greatness using a whack of potential grifts.

Project Snapshot

Dinky Dinos

A casual simulation game where players channel their inner photographer to capture the natural beauty of a remote island for peculiar clients!

Dawn of the Monsters

13AM Games

Dawn of the Monsters is a co-operative kaiju beat-em-up coming in 2021. Players take control of powerful monsters in order to take on the evil “Nephilim”- a horde of creatures that are hellbent on destroying the planet. Liberate four major metropolitan areas- from Toronto to Tokyo in this epic action game.

Shwip

Jamhammer Games

Dominate global leaderboards as you face off against an onslaught of geometric foes. Shwip combines straight up twin-stick arcade action with tight controls, insane pixel destruction and devastating weapons and abilities. Evade, outlast and play with style in four game modes over single and local multiplayer.

Some Like It Hot!

AugEx

Some Like It Hot! is a combination of job simulation and visual novel, where you’ll be crafting complex caffeinated concoctions during the rush hours, and getting to know the regulars during your down time.

Gladiotron

Gavin Ball / Full Circle CS Inc.

Gladiotron is a modern take on Metroidvanias, while not hiding it’s retro inspirations. It is also an online interactive story that follows the adventures of 2 Detroit area high school students as they get wrapped up in a cosmic adventure that will test their faith and resilience as they try to save the galaxy from the intergalactic space demons.

Triversal

Phantom Compass

Triversal is a simply satisfying spatial puzzle game that helps you find your chill. Relaxing and rewarding; Suspend a light orb over the goal by tethering to nearby supports and complete puzzle after puzzle.

Told By Starlight

Ryan Khan

Told by Starlight is a no prep, GM-less tabletop game for 2-6 players. It is about drawing constellations and telling the tales behind them. Using a standard deck of playing cards to generate themes and prompts, you will create an entire mythology, and all the characters within.

Hop Together

Toasty Bread Team

Help bunnies bring carrots up to their friends in this charming little puzzle game.

A Night at Manster Mansion

Onino Zvezdin

Woken in the night by your boss, you must go uncover the murder at the mysterious Manster Mansion belonging to the most ruthless mafia clan in the world. Will you be able to get out unscathed or will you perish like the typical victim of their cruelty?

DepowerBall

Mega Power Games

DepowerBall is a competitive game where the fate of every matchup is influenced by fast-paced gameplay and tactical decision-making. Every match, each player starts with the same set of powers to try and accomplish their task of pleasing the Dragon Queen by feeding her delicious treats! When a player wins a round, he or she will earn the Queen’s favour, but will earn the wrath of the other players as they vote to take away one of the winner’s powers! Adapt to your changing conditions, or get left behind as the other players take advantage of your weakened state!

Recalculating

Blank Slate Games

Think small talk is tough? Imagine if your life depended on it. Recalculating is a soft-thriller visual-novel intended to simulate an uncomfortable position familiar to many women: being in a rideshare vehicle. Navigate your thoughts and choices by launching a ball to select dialogue options that bounce around the screen. In a game with multiple endings and plot twists, can you speak your mind when it really matters? After all, when anxieties heighten, things becomes harder to say… literally.

Bapy

Snotwurm

Adopt and care for an infant demon of your own!

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Our Partners

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Patron Tier Supporter

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Promoter Tier Supporters

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WordPlay is our free festival celebrating the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. Each year there will be a curated game showcase, talks by creators about the craft, and ways for the public to learn about making games.

The 8th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 21st & 22nd 2020!

Stream starts at 11am EST on Saturday and Sunday!

twitch.tv/handeyesociety

Free!

SCHEDULE

Saturday

Josh Labelle

Xalavier Nelson Jr.

Dhruv Jani

+

Sunday

Kaelan Doyle Myerscough

Sharang Biswas

Kinsey Erickson

Hello everyone! Wordplay is here and we’re so excited to be able to put on this event to feature so many amazing games, speakers and artists and AHH! It’s finally here! This blog will have links to all the information you need to know about the festival this Saturday and Sunday. We will be streaming the event exclusively on our Twitch channel and well as our Discord channel for those who aren’t 

Here are the featured speakers for Saturday and Sunday! This is definitely our best lineup so far and we’re so happy to be able to bring their expertise to you.

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Here are the features games for the festival! Please consider supporting these awesome creators! Follow them, engage with them, tell others about their work! Also, the commissioned games creators who are working on their game and we will share their completed works in a followup blog post! We’re so excited to see what they make!

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Credits

Festival Director
Royel “Rokashi” Edwards

Executive Director(s)
Len Predko & Sagan Yee

Director of Operations
Amanda Wong

Editor/Director of Technology
Jordan Sparks

Animators
Paige Lincecum
Emily Hammersley-Ambroise
Miranda Juncos

Volunteer Coordinator
Aaron Demeter

Volunteers
Riggy El-Shebiny
Elissa Park
Nelson Kim
Denise Gutierrez Maldonado

Special thanks to Ontario Creates. With their support events like WordPlay are possible, so thank you so much!

The 8th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 21th & 22th 2020!

Hello folks, it’s been getting colder and you know what that means, WordPlay time! Returning this year we’re back to the 2 day format, big thanks to Ontario Creates for making it possible! Below are our stunning speaker line up for this year, bringing you some really amazing content. We’re looking forward to spending some time together and learning together about all the new and amazing things going on with words in the game world!

Xalavier Nelson Jr. (he/him)

Self Funding Smaller, Better Games

Part motivational talk and part discussion of his own development process, Xalavier Nelson Jr. shows how precise, focused game design can be used to make compelling games at minimal budget scales. What do you do if the talk of platforms and publishers turns out to be empty, or you don’t own a home to take a mortgage out on for your million-dollar indie darling moonshot? You make games cheaper than them, in ways that are healthier for our communities, more sustainable for our finances… and better than anything they could achieve in a similar sphere.

Josh Labelle (he/him)

Twitter

An Opportunity To Build Something: Grief and Tabletop Gaming

In January 2019, the dungeon master of my long-time D&D campaign died suddenly. The rest of us found ourselves fumbling for words in a new context, trying to navigate our grief together. We knew playing tabletop would never be the same for us. Could we even continue playing together at all? What would it look like with our stalwart DM gone? To feel our way through the experience, we started playing different kinds of games, including GM-less ones like Avery Alder’s The Quiet Year (from which this talk takes it title). We learned that when you abandon the trappings of initiative orders and dice rolls, tabletop roleplaying games are ultimately conversations. They teach you how to be attentive to each other’s needs and pain and how to feel out the boundaries between self and community. They can become a space for experiencing the joys of being together and for processing something as big as grief. This talk is about how that process worked for us and about the possibilities that open up when we’re willing to untangle difficult emotions together through play.

Druv Jani (he/him)

Instagram

The Concentric Fictions of a Generous History

Folk theatre in India, and across south east Asia has slowly withdrawn from its once dominant public role. Such theatre enacted on the street and in the town square, and often performed by traveling troupes and mendicants, was once a bulwark of anti-colonial agitation a mere hundred years ago. Comprising a variety of theatre forms and storytelling methods and born in various traditions and languages all across the subcontinent, (Nautanki, Yakshagana, Jatra and Bhavai to name a few), It has always been performed irreverently, with great improvisation to challenge prevalent hegemony in an inventive reenactment of familiar myths and tales. The talk will attempt to demonstrate how Interactive Fiction is indeed a natural extension of a particular form of theatre, especially when practiced with the same lingual variety and disseminated with the same generosity as the street-plays of yore. And how such improvisational form and the de-authored narratives are perfect mediums for challenging authority and creating exquisite and intricate dialogue around difficult histories. The intent of the presentation is to argue that by borrowing from older traditions, Interactive fiction might become a site for strident counter cultural protest.

Kinsey Erickson (she/her)

Twitter

40k Slow Burn Rivals to Lovers: Why You Should Hire Fan-fiction Authors to Write Your Game

This talk will discuss the history and merits of fan-fiction and break down pop culture’s (often gendered) stigmas against it as a medium. It will examine certain aspects of fan-fiction and fandom and relate them to games writing, such as intense familiarity with a world and its lore, a strong understanding of the aspects of writing and world-building that fans love and want more of, deep understanding of player/reader agency (as seen in fan-fiction that stars the “reader” as a character), community building and engagement (such as fan-fiction Big Bangs and zines), and more. It will also discuss what classifies a piece of writing as “fan-fiction” as opposed to extended writing in an IP (i.e. the Halo novels) and how this distinction is often blurred.

Sharang Biswas (he/him)

Kickstarter

The Power of Single-Player Analogue Roleplaying Games

Single-player analogue roleplaying games occupy an intersectional space: like choice-based gamebooks and interactive fiction, they prompt a solo player to make decisions; like prose fiction or poetry, they rely on written text to enchant and inspire players; like tabletop roleplaying games, they demand a co-creative attitude, where the text contains gaps, unable to realize a complete story without free-form, creative input from the player. While often overshadowed by their showier, multiplayer cousins (such as Dungeons & Dragons and the like), single-player- roleplaying games have been enjoying greater prominence recently (perhaps as a result of social distancing). For example, Jeeyon Shim & Kevin Pulp’s Wait For Me funded on Kickstarter in forty minutes, and made almost five times its initial goal, while Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire swept at the Ennie Awards, one of the most prestigious award ceremonies in the tabletop RPG industry. Additionally, creators are increasingly innovating on the form and content. Hutchings asks the player to journal their responses, but also erase their writing as the player’s protagonist loses their memory. Anna Anthropy, in Tavern at the End of the World, expects players to code all their language in euphemism and hidden meaning, lest a fictional colonial ruler glean your rebellious intent. Lucian Kahn’s upcoming Consumable Me, suggests that players literally burn some of the material they write down. In a sense, these games can additionally be thought of as a sort of “speculative fiction”, not in that they necessarily rethink our societal and technological conventions in the manner sci-fi and fantasy fiction do, but that they force reader-players to speculate. The “what-if” and “how about” questions that provoke reflection and spawn legions of fan-fiction stories are made explicit in the text, and the state of reflexive interactivity occurs during play. Single-Player Roleplaying games, thus, are coming to define a new genre of art (of games, of literature, of hypertext). In this talk, I’ll be drawing on various case studies, scholarship from authors such as Evan Torner and Espen Aarseth, and some of my own design work to discuss the power and potential of this growing genre of text-based games.

Kaelan Doyle Myerscough (they/them)

Twitter | Instagram | Itch.io 

Collaborative Critical World-building in 30 Minutes or Less

In this talk I will discuss how the methods by which we conceptualize fictional worlds shape what those worlds look and feel like. I will also discuss some strategies and methods for building more nuanced, vivid and relevant story worlds within a game design context. This talk is predicated on a feminist, anti-racist, queer and anti-capitalist approach to world-building that argues that mainstream world-building processes recreate problematic assumptions about people and society; by creating new and radical methods for building worlds, we can learn to think differently about the world we live in as well.

The 8th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 21th & 22th 2020!

Hello everyone, we’re super excited to announce the games that we’re going to be showcasing this year for the 8th annual WordPlay! With games from all over the world we are looking forward to sharing them with you. This year, things are going to be a little different with us hosting everything on our Twitch channel. Just like last year, the festival will be running for 2 days, with talks and games both days! Games will be showcased a few ways depending on what works best for the game. So some will be live on Twitch, hosted on itch.io, or available for download. On the schedule, we’ll be making note of how they’ll be showcased, so you’ll be up to date for the festival!

Check them out below! We’re looking forward to the festival and hanging out virtually with you. Keep wearing your mask and washing your hands <3

Oh, Reader

Seb Pines (they/them)

Twitter

An interactive short horror story about an urban legend, something that happened in my small town, maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t.

When Rivers Were Trails

Elizabeth LaPensée with Indian Land Tenure Foundation and the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at MSU

Twitter

A point-and-click adventure game about the impact of colonization on Indigenous communities in the 1890’s.

Golden Mart

Twitter: Mike | Carly

Despite the magical catastrophe threatening the fabric of society, you must satisfy the customer in this solo table-top RPG!

We Are The Caretakers

Heart Shaped Games

Twitter

We Are The Caretakers is a sci-fi squad management RPG where you protect endangered creatures in an Afro-futurist world.

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place

Studio Oleomingus

Twitter | Instagram

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place is a story about a municipal building eater, and ponders the violent cost and the profound grief of having to survive at the edge of despotism, when places of entangled heritage are being willfully effaced.

Peanut Butter Toast

youllbejustfine

Twitter

An interactive fiction about insomnia and late-night snacking.

Visigoths Vs Mall Goths

Lucian Kahn

Twitter

Visigoths vs. Mall Goths is a tabletop roleplaying game and dating sim about the conflicts and romances among the warriors who sacked ancient Rome and 20th century spooky teens, set in a suburban Los Angeles shopping mall during 1996.

Serre

Insertdisc5

Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr

A visual novel about a girl and an alien drinking tea and falling in love!

Adios

Mischief

Twitter

A pig farmer decides he no longer wants to dispose of bodies for the mob, and discusses this decision with his would-be killer.

Signs of the Sojourner

Echodog Games

Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

A conversational card game where your deck represents your character and how well you’re able to communicate and connect with others in the world.

Us Lovely Corpses

d Marie Licea

Twitter | Instagram

Us Lovely Corpses is a visual novel about a witch saving a friend who doesn’t seem to want to be saved.

Distant Transmission

Caleb Foss

Distant Transmission is a noisy collaborative radio show broadcast for a far-away friend.

Saving You From Yourself

Taylor McCue

Twitter

Fuck up a perfectly good girl by helping her.

Commissioned Game Creators

Cale Bradbury (he/him)

Word World
Pitch: Word World is an exploratory text tool for fridge-magnet-esque audiovisual hyperpoetry, powered by our collective voices.

Sharang Biswas (he/him)

Kickstarter

A Tale of Etmni

A stone-age deity must contend with how his neglect of his people has lead to ruin, and help guide a hero to glory. This game was begun at game writing class taught by Sande Chen for Playcrafting. The completion of this game has been commissioned by The Hand Eye Society.

Leann Sterling (she/her)
(1) New Message

Pitch: The game mimics a text conversation between the player and their toxic partner. Follow the course of their relationship through the messages they send each other. The player chooses what to text their partner, and their decisions will determine the outcome of the game.

Allison K. Cole (she/her) & Devon Lyddle (they/them)

Intersections
Pitch: A light hearted tabletop word game using Venn Diagrams to examine concepts in the world around us and how they overlap.

Jesse Gazic (he/they)
Sorry Simulator
Pitch: Sorry Simulator is a satirical look at the role apologies play in cancel culture. Will you find forgiveness or end up crushed under the feet of an online mob?

Scenario World
Brook Jensen (he/him)  + Liam Gallager (he/him)  + Sarah Green Fisher (she/her) 

Overtaxed

Elias has a problem: his taxes are coming due, and with the recent passing of his wife, he has no one to help him. Dina has a problem: her exam is next week, but her mom has sent her off to Orillia to help her Uncle with some paperwork. And the two haven’t seen each other since Dina was a little girl. Can these two get along, complete these tax forms, and maybe learn a thing or two along the way? Features an alternating point of view, music, and emotionally wrought, tax-filing gameplay!

Hand Eye Society’s Twitch Stream Free

Saturday, November 21st & 22nd 2020!

DEADLINES AUGUST 31ST 11:59PM

  Hand Eye Society’s WordPlay Festival is on its way and it’s…a bit different because of *gestures* our current earth’s issues. But have no fear, the festival is just taking on a new form and we’re already cooking up some exciting things for the 8th year of the festival that celebrates the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. This year theme of WordPlay is “Empty Words”. Throughout the year it has been statement after statement after statement on just… everything. Games is going to ‘finally’ get rid of abusers, big brands marketing off of Black Lives Matter statements, human right violations by the state, promises of ‘meaningful change,’ defunding and abolishing the police; the list of empty promises goes on and on. Things don’t move forward and are just washed over by the constant stream of 2020’s ever-growing list of shitty and awful events. So let’s highlight these conversations and celebrate the resistance and perseverance needed to create a better, more equitable society. Be they angry, joyful, tired, hopeful, or otherwise, we want to hear from you! We’re open to a broad interpretation of this theme, so feel free to pitch anything you’ve got. We’re so thrilled to be able to have this event. We may not have a physical space, but the show must go on! Check out the applications!

Look at Xalavier Nelson Jr. having so much fun at WordPlay wow what a great time!

Submit a Speaker Application!

Firstly, we’re opening up the submissions for speakers. We want you to submit your talk, panel, workshop, round-table, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. If it deals with the subject of interactive fiction and writing in contemporary games, it’ll be right up our alley. We want to hear about new and innovative ways to combine storytelling, digital media, interactivity, and the craft of writing into potent new forms of creative expression. What experiments are being conducted to change the face of interactive fiction? In what ways are the boundaries being pushed? We want to know! Interested? Take a look at our WordPlay Page see what presentations we’ve put on for past WordPlay festivals. Then check out our Speaker Proposal Form below and submit your idea! Don’t delay, the form is only active until August 31st, 2020. Artist fees of $500 CAD will be paid for 1-hour talks and workshops. As WordPlay is entirely online this year some content will be prerecorded based off of the nature of selected speakers.  

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WordPlay 2019, Everyone Playing all the games.

Submit a Showcase Game!

Would you like to submit or suggest a showcase game? What we’re looking for are games with exceptional writing or that uses writing in an integral way. Please do so via the form below before midnight on August 31, 2020. You can submit your own game, or a game you feel strongly about. There is no submission fee and Toronto-made, Canadian, and international games are all welcome. We will be selecting between 12 and 14 games from everything entered through the Game Submission Form below. Game creators with games accepted into the showcase will receive an artist fee of $250 CAD. Depending on the nature of submissions, games selected to be in the WordPlay 2020 showcase will either be presented as a pre-recorded Let’s Play to be hosted on our Twitch channel, or be made available for free online for the duration of the festival. We will work directly with artists to figure out the format best suited for their project.  

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Laura Michet doing her talk at WordPlay 2019.

Apply for a Commission Game!

New this year, we will be commissioning games specifically for WordPlay 2020! We are commission 3 games that are long the curatorial theme of “Empty Words”. If you want to apply please do so via the form below before midnight on August 31, 2020. The proposal can be of any length; we really want to give folks free reign of the things they want to discuss, whether it is long form or short. The game should be in a playable state for the festival, though it doesn’t need to be done. Overall the proposals just need to be in some way interactive fiction or writing in contemporary games. We have a pretty broad definition for that; it could be a physical game, LARP, Twine, Renpy, or any system you want. Any projects that fall along the spectrum of playful experience are welcome! Artists selected will receive $1000 CAD for their game, split into two payments of $500 each over the months of October and November. Please submit through the Commission Submission Form below!

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Stay tuned for more announcements coming soon about the showcase jury, workshops and special guests!

About WordPlay

WordPlay is our free one-day festival celebrating the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. Now in our 8th year, we will once again host a curated game showcase, talks by creators about their craft, and ways for the public to try their hand at making games. This year, we are supported by the following organizations: