The 7th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 9th & 10th 2019!

Sat. November 9th, Sunday November 10th

Saturday 11:00am – 4:30pm and Sunday 1:30pm – 4:30pm

Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free!

Did you hear the good news? WordPlay 7 is happening THIS WEEKEND!

We’re so excited and proud to be able to bring you games from all over the world by the amazing creators and hand-picked speakers which some, by the way, are flying into the city just to talk to us! We also have tons of workshops–we know you like those! It’s going to be a fun time especially that WordPlay is now TWO (2) days of narrative fun instead of one, so get plenty of rest, don’t want to miss any of this!

Just as a reminder, let’s be sure to make WordPlay a safer space together. Here is our Safer Spaces Policy that we will abide by including all speakers, participants, volunteers, and staff members. We will have Safety Check Personnel on site which is comprised of both staff and volunteers. They will be wearing prominent red ribbons and will be present throughout the weekend. If you have any questions or concerns during WordPlay, we can help to address them. If you would like to contact us after the event, you can email us at safe@handeyesociety.com or you can fill out this anonymous online form.

But allow me to break down the event for ya, like cookies in milk!

Look at this cool WordPlay poster! Oh my god! Credz to Elizabeth Zhang.

Where to go

Saturday

Micro-Talks

Sunday

What to Play

Our Partners

The 7th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 9th & 10th 2019!

Sat. November 9th, Sunday November 10th

Saturday 11:00am – 4:30pm and Sunday 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free!

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Hey everyone! We are at full HP from the Hand Eye Society Ball and we’re back again with another event–WordPlay 7 (they grow up so fast )! This year is going to be bigger than ever hosting even more narrative games from all over the world! Also, this year, WordPlay is now a 2-day event! Which means you’ll have more talks, more workshops and you-time to experience all of the games we have in store for you!

Without further ado, we’re extremely excited to present to you the final lineup of games for WordPlay 2019! This year you can literally type your feelings out to the one you love in Types of Romance, all the way to doing your best to cover up a sacrifice with your friends in Animalia! Play them all! There’s plenty of time!

See you there!

Apologies, for what it’s worth

Shrunken Studios

Toronto, Canada

Read a dense letter from your sibling to explore your shared history and consider what you’ve left behind.

Can Androids Pray

Xalavier Nelson Jr., Natalie Clayton, Priscilla Snow

El Paso, USA

A shortform visual novel about angry femme mechs at the end of the world, and God.

Unbecoming

Bryan Depuy

Toronto, Canada

Unbecoming is a sonically-driven revisionist body horror denouement.

Unmaking, Unmade

G.C. “Grim” Baccaris

New York, USA

Manipulate an eerie videotape and confront a dangerous infatuation by rewinding, fast-forwarding, and pausing the tape to alter its contents and reshape the fate of your love.

Types of Romance

Mary Arroz & Xinran Ma

Oakville, Canada

Woo the high-born beauty of your dreams in this vintage shoujo-inspired dating sim/typing game!

We Should Talk

Kat Aguiar, Nobonita Bhowmik, Francesca Carletto-Leon, Jordan Jones-Brewster, Carol Mertz, Jack Schlesinger

Global

“We should talk” is a short-form narrative game that will make you think twice about the words you choose.

00 Comments in moderationpressspace

Michael Arcadi

Toronto, Canada

pressspace is a one-button typing game where you put the spaces in between words.

American Election

Greg Buchanan

UK

Play as Abigail Thoreau, a campaign assistant working to elect candidate Truman Glass in the 2016 American Election.

LIONKILLER

Sisi Jiang

USA

LIONKILLER is a choose-your-own-adventure game about Hua Mulan, a young lesbian who is conscripted into the First Opium War against the British Empire.

Recalculating***

Jessica Zhang, Benjamin Mora-Davison, Christine Kilfoil

Oakville, Canada

A soft thriller visual novel illustrating how women can be taken advantage of through daily social pressures, which men may be unaware of. Players navigate through conversations by launching a ball at words which visually represent their avatar’s thought process as the situation deteriorates.

Animalia

Ian Michael Waddell

Victoria, Canada

Animalia is a massively-branching interactive comedy in which you play four forest creatures who are trying to cover up the ritual sacrifice of a small child by piloting a replica of that small child.

The Library Of Babble

Demi Schanzel

New Zealand

Wander through a gentle garden of words, discover the mumbling words of other storytellers and leave a few of your own.

Electric Sleep

Jack Sanderson-Thwaite, Matthew Weekes, Vlad Abadzhiev, Michael Becze

Bristol, UK

Electric Sleep is a pixel art interactive story, where you explore a crumbling world as an emotionally driven robot.

The Horizon

Freya Campbell

Bristol, UK

A postmodern kinetic novel, finishing a trilogy about trans women in love, tarot, alien abduction, and escaping from cycles of self-loathing.

The Vale

St. Catherines, Canada

David Evans (Falling Squirrel Inc.)

The Vale is a story driven, action/adventure game that sets out to breathe new life into medieval combat and provide a truly novel experience for visually impaired and sighted gamers alike.

Bound Together

John Vanderhoef

California, USA

Bound Together is a top-down narrative adventure game made in Bitsy that explores the relationship between a bounty hunter and his captive.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening to Steal Treasure

Alexander Blechman

Chicago, USA

A comedic poetry game where you remix one of Robert Frost’s most famous works, swapping out words to transform it into an epic fantasy battle.

Curses

Emily Flynn-Jones

Brantford, Canada

A game about words and how they wound; emotional abuse and fantasies of revenge; and doing witchcraft with your cat.

Dear Reader

Local No. 12

New York, USA

Dear Reader turns classic literature into an addictive word puzzle game, and lets you curl up and play your favorite books from Pride and Prejudice to Pygmalion.

The Last Survey

Nicholas O’Brien

Brooklyn, USA

The Last Survey is a narrative essay game about a geologist contracted by a Brazilian mining company to survey rare earth metal reserves.

Strollplaying Game Trio Pack

Smolghost

Toronto, Canada

Three small self-directed narrative games to print and play wherever you are and whenever you feel like it!

Verdure

Sharang Biswas

New York, USA

Verdure is an analogue storytelling and role-playing game about witchcraft and revenge, played in an empty kitchen while preparing and eating salad.

Our Partners

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Less than a week to go until WordPlay 6 is upon us! We are extremely excited to announce the final lineup of games that will be playable in this year’s arcade, selected by an international jury and spanning the globe from France to South Africa. Of course, the action all takes place right here at the Toronto Reference Library, where stories are the portals to a million possible worlds. Become a weird Internet cop in Hypnospace Outlaw; survive your job as an underpaid social media content moderator in Sentry; date your weapons in Boyfriend Dungeon; explore neo-veganism, food security, and gay aliens in It’s for Melody, and collect tales amidst a folkloric Great Depression USA in Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. Witchy Twines, historical interactive fiction, tough conversations, and genre-bending adventures await!

We’ve also got our full schedule of talks lined up below, so take a gander and Spread the Word!

The 6th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 10 2018.

Sat. November 10th, 12-5pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free!

RSVP on our Facebook page for updates!

Schedule

See the full list of speakers and talk descriptions here.

Arcade Showcase

The Tower

By Freya C / Communistsister, Bristol, United Kingdom

An interactive fiction horror game with interactive illustrations, about tarot, trans women, therapy, and alien abduction.

The Eyes That Look Back

By: Maria ‘Leno’ Heyaca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We are surrounded with faces. The ones of the people around us and the ones we carry with ourselves.

Dead Horizon

By: Matthew Ritter, California, USA

A visual novel with no choices where you get to shoot people in the steampunk wild west and maybe feel bad about it?

Hypnospace Outlaw

By: Jay Tholen, Mike Lasch, Xalavier Nelson Jr., Gemany & USA

Hypnospace Outlaw is an alternate-reality internet simulator in which players explore a variety of strange websites to find violations.

Wolf at the Door

By: Deck of Bards, UK, Toronto, Global

Wolf at the Door is a slice-of-life folk horror game blending interactive fiction with resource management.

after HOURS

By: Bahiyya Khan, Johannesburg, South Africa

after HOURS is a point and click FMV whereby players are made witness to a night in the life of Lilith, a young woman that was molested as a child and has Borderline Personality Disorder as a result.

Powerless

By: Narratio Studios, London, UK

An interactive simulator designed to test humanity’s ability to survive without electricity.

Dialogue: A Writer’s Story

By: Tea-Powered Games, London, UK

Dialogue is a visual novel in which you play out a year in the life of Lucille, a writer working on her second novel, by making small choices during everyday conversations.

Spindlewheel

By: Sasha Reneau, Los Angeles, USA

Spindlewheel is a tarot-like storytelling game where you use the concepts in the cards as anchors to weave together a story with your friends!

Knife Sisters

By: Transcenders Media / Bobbi A Sand, Malmö, Sweden

Knife Sisters is a dark slice of life story, an erotic visual novel centered around themes such as peer pressure, manipulation, love, obsession and BDSM.

Nod If You Can Hear Me

By: Emma Kidwell, Maryland, USA

A short game about anxiety over aging, guilt, and and memory loss.

Circuits

By: Elieen Mary Howowka, Montréal, Quebec

Circuits is a narrative-based Twine game that explores what it means to remember, witness, and talk about sexual trauma.

Boyfriend Dungeon

By: Kitfox Games, Montréal, Quebec

Date your weapons in this flirty, playful, welcoming dungeoncrawler. Plunder the dunj and take cute blades on romantic outings to level them up!

NovaCorp

By: Marine Bernard, Nantes, France

When Video Game meets Dystopia YA Novel = NovaCorp.

Time To Feed

By: Sharang Biswas, NY, USA

A vampire’s latest victims unearth painful memories of his past.

It Will Be Hard

By: Hien Pham and Amos Wolfe, Perth, Australia

It Will Be Hard is an interactive graphic novel about two men, with two polar opposite sexualities, working toward one mutually fulfilling relationship.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

By: Dim Bulb Games, Santa Fe, USA

A game about traveling, telling stories, and the American myth, set in a folkloric Great Depression United States, with characters from a wide variety of writers.

The Mirror

By: Kim McAuliffe, Seattle, USA

A metaphorical RPG about self-image, reflections, and reality.

Headliner: NoviNews

By: Unbound Creations LLC, Seattle, USA

Short media bias adventure where YOU control national news and its impact on your career, society, and family.

Late Summer Nights, Episode 1

By: Anna Prein, Vancouver, Canada

A visual novel exploring friendship on the 90s/00s internet, and what happens when it intersects with the “real world”.

The Crimson Diamond

By: Julia Minamata, Toronto, Canada

Text parser graphical mystery adventure game.

Sentry

By: Josh Labelle, Toronto, Canada

An interactive short story in which you see how long you can last as a low paid social media content moderator — based on true stories of working conditions at the agencies where these jobs are done.

It’s for Melody

By: Jillian Wakarchuk, Toronto, Canada

It’s for Melody is a twine game about neo-veganism, food security, and gay aliens in outer space.

“Who Killed My Uncle?”

By: Devon Wiersma, Toronto, Canada

“Who Killed My Uncle” is a narrative game set in WWII about censorship, loss, and family you’ll never get to meet, made in memorium of my Great Uncle Sidney who died in the Spanish Civil War.

Doki Doki Literature Club!

By: Team Salvato

You’ve become a new member of the Literature Club, will you write the way into their heart?

WordPlay Jury

Lena NW
Cătălin Nedeluș
Andrei Olaru
Todd Anderson
Nuha Alkadi
Ben Kybartas
Andrew G. Schneider
Kyle Seeley
Matthew Seiji Burns
Paul Alex Gray
Jenny Goldstick
Salvatore Pane
Adoné Kitching

Jury Assembler: Jo Summers

Partners