Washington State University Intersectional Game Jam Winners!

Earlier this year I was invited to be a judge in the first ever Intersectional Game Jam at Washington State University!  It was a pleasure to see what this crew of first-time game developers were able to come up with.

Here are your winners!

Honorable Mention: Private Cruz

Private Cruz is a Twine game about the experiences of a Puerto Rican woman serving in the military.  The player must guide her through interactions with her fellow soldiers, enduring microaggressions and weighing the cost of confronting them (and potentially alienating them) against the personal cost of swallowing her feelings on a daily basis.

Third Place: This is Our Turf!

This is Our Turf! is an extremely cute RPG Maker game about the transphobic “bathroom bills” that have been popping up around the country.  It also engages with the topic of TERFs, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists who, trans activists argue, have turned some women’s spaces unsafe for trans women.  The creators of this short game wisely set their story at a Renaissance Fair to take advantage of all of the free fantasy-themed assets that come with RPG Maker (something I also did with my first game!).  Note: you will have to download this game in order to play it.

Second Place: DLS

I don’t want to spoil the twist at the end of DLS for you, so all I will say is check out this beautiful, clever, well-designed Twine game and feel like the star of your very own horror film.

First Place: Invisible Disability

Invisible Disability is also a Twine game, but with a completely different aesthetic from DLS.  Whereas the former is an 8-bit pixel art old school game with an intense, cinematic-style plot, Invisible Disability uses art from Bitstrips to create the feeling of peeking in on a real-life college student dealing with mental illness.  The player has a limited number of “spoons” available that they can use to accomplish their daily tasks and they have to think carefully about where to allocate their energy.

Thank you to everyone who entered the Game Jam and congratulations to all the winners!

And special thanks to Ruth Gregory for giving me the chance to serve as a judge alongside the fabulous Edmond Chang and Kishonna Gray.