#game developers of color

[videogamepoc]

November 21, 2024 -- By Scott Tong and James Perkins Mastromarino

Spray paint and roller skates are instruments of protest in an upcoming video game set in the Middle East. Pro-Palestinian and overtly activist, a downloadable prototype for “Palestine Skating Game” has players roll around the occupied West Bank, blasting globs of paint at tanks and a massive separation wall. “We have about two kilometers of the Israeli separation wall, along with like two kilometers of graffiti that is actually on the separation wall or has been on the separation wall,” says Justin, the main developer of the game. He spoke on the condition of using only his first name as his political views have sparked severe online harassment. More than 50 mostly-volunteer developers have contributed to “Palestine Skating Game” since its bootstrapped beginnings three years ago. The project grew from Justin’s love of Arabic electronic music and a 2018 visit to the region. “If absolutely nothing else, we will be recreating a lot of things that Palestinians are seeing and what they experience in an actual 3D space,” says Justin, “like the harassment at a checkpoint or an encounter with a gang of settlers.” Should it reach crowdfunding goals, the team plans to build levels based on the past, present and future of the West Bank and Gaza to both preserve a place that’s been destroyed and to imagine possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “What would a good future for Palestine look like?” asks Justin. “What would any kind of just a peace settlement look like — could they truly get along in any way, especially at this hour?” Meanwhile, the game’s community has taken real-world action. Its fans donated thousands of dollars to help a developer who worked on the game flee Gaza earlier this year. Justin traveled to Cairo to pay a travel service $7,500 to facilitate the coder and her sister’s escape to Egypt. Ultimately, Justin believes that “Palestine Skating Game” could bridge an empathy gap. “I really do hope that we reach American youth and people who play video games — it would be wonderful to target young white men who voted for [President-elect Donald] Trump with leftist video games generally,” says Justin. “To introduce them to a side of the Arab world that they never knew about — it's a vibrant, diverse and artistically brilliant place.”

Donate to the developers here!

And follow them on Twitter and Instagram to say up to date!

[finjico]

Fight monsters, talk to ghosts, and hang out with friends while discovering your college town's darkest secrets in Usual June. Wishlist on Steam!

[milkywayes]

GARRUS VAKARIAN: DATABASE IMAGE ACCESS. > PT. 1 : 2160, 2166, 2170. > all files backdated according to user preferences: (terran_coordinated.calendar).

[jefpoo421]

[arsuf]

"You might have made me what I am, but I can be so much more than what you created me to be." 🧛

[akabaka-dev]

Double art reveal day? Yeaaaah double art reveal day ���️

Aka has been COOKIN' this week 👀

Hh'eily, the Color out of Space 🌈

[dizzybizz]

some doodles

[jamscantumbl]

Finally started working on something I've wanted to do for a while - Make a small video game!!

The game is being made in GBStudio so there are a lot of limitations on what's going on and I need to learn a lot about palettes to make it look great but that will come with time.

The story will be based on MYTH by Narcissist Cookbook with somebody else visiting the Island of St. Sasha.

[jurassicjoowan]

More sprite animation work of my Dromaeolestes aquarius (aquatic running hunter):

Walking

Sprinting

Jumping

Swiping

Biting

The more I worked on these little animations over the year, the more confident I got with the idea of maybe using these for a game one day. Probably something inspired by The Lost World for the PS1, or Jurassic park Warpath in the 2nd dimension, but with the setting of my project.

But for now, I'm just doing visual assets and concept art ha.

^ Selection artwork of the D. aquarius! A nimble footed theropod with snake-like reflexes!

[videogamepoc]

Dreams on a Pillow - a videogame experience about the 1948 Nakba, based on a true story

Reported by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell | Nov. 29, 2024

Palestinian developer Rasheed Abueideh has announced Dreams On A Pillow, a mixture of stealth-adventure and interactive documentary set during the Nakba - Israel's violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, shortly after Israel's founding. Created by "a global team of veteran game developers", it's the story of a Palestinian woman grappling with the loss of her baby after fleeing a bloody assault on her town. Here's a description of the game, via press release. "Dreams on a Pillow is a pseudo-3D Stealth-Adventure game based on the true Palestinian folktale of Omm - a Palestinian mother who fled the massacre of her town with her new-born child. After running for an hour in sheer panic, she realized that she had carried a pillow to safety, instead of her child. Inspired by the story, Dreams on a Pillow explores Omm's life story, showcasing both the history of Palestine before the ethnic cleansing of the lands, and the trauma borne from the violence that was inflicted upon the Palestinian people during the Nakba." According to the announcement materials, Omm's journey as a refugee takes her through the sites of several atrocities, including concentration camps and attacks on Palestinians near the Lebanese border. Whenever she is able to rest, the game switches into a documentary mode, "reliving a rapidly fading memory of a pre-Zionist Palestine" by means of archive imagery and text. Omm's principle possession is the pillow, which serves as both a terrible reminder of her lost child and a kind of coping device. When carrying it, she's not able to interact with objects or do things like jump, crawl, throw rocks and climb ladders. Putting the pillow down, however, triggers Omm's guilt and trauma, provoking nightmares that "reveal dangers of the mind, and shroud the dangers of the real world". The immediate practical challenge during the stealth-adventure sections, then, is to complete whatever objectives are at hand and retrieve the pillow before Omm's delusions overwhelm her. [READ MORE HERE]

Support Rasheed's project directly here on LaunchGood:

[finjico]

Investigate a college town's century-spanning secret history, talk to ghosts, fight monsters, and hang out with friends (alive and dead) in Usual June. Wishlist on Steam!

[sillylittlecharacters]

Concept - the reason why SASASA:AP's Mirabelle's eyebrows are outlined like that is because she's going grey early from stress.

[sunwyrms]

May we have more Loopdile please?

(typically i dont do requests, but i suppose i can humor you since you were so polite~)

They do this every morning. Nobody has any idea why. Bonnie is sick of it.

[id in alt]

[shoehedd]

Threw up a heap of assets on Itch.io to help out with paying for my soon to be born son and my lack of leave! Enjoy em!

[kcamberart]

Still working on the lights and shadows, but I think the library scene is coming along nicely.

[thewakingcloak]

Hey y'all just a small bit of news that

ProtoDungeon Episode II is LIVE ON STEAM 🎉🎉🎉

Please go check it out, spread it around, see if you can get the ProtoDungeon Series bundle working(??)

Also I would like to reveal, at long last, the protagonist's name, in celebration of the Steam release of PD2:

Lef

(hey remember when I used to do these????)

Lef's story is yet being told. Who or what will she become? All you know is that she remains trapped in nightmares...

Well, and you also know you can go play her second episode now :)

Ok so the Steam bundle?? I figured it out???

(after all, why not compete with Elden Ring Nightrein?)