I wanted to share some of my thoughts about my experience of the QG Jam so far. 

Trick and I knew that neither of us were in a place, mentally or physically, to finish a playable product just now. But while we watched the symposium, the discussion of queering world building through how maps and mapping are represented or withheld really resonated with us both in different ways. 

I am very drawn to the idea of creating an experience where navigation is very emotional, and tied to personal interactions. As well as exploring the push and pull between the need to connect to others and the fear of whether the next person you speak to will put you in danger because you are "different." 

We were quickly drawn to public transit as  a focal point, a place of maximal uncertainty as to how safe we feel in our everyday lives as visibly genderqueer people. Trick's write up on the game's main page covers our current core idea, though we do keep getting clever ideas on how we might want play with the gap between metaphor and simulation later if we find the time to make more than the simplest version of the game.

For this first week of the game jam we focused on concept and pre-production stuff. I made an initial "crowd" figure, to use for concept mock ups as Trick refined the idea and began learning the Godot engine. Next I started on a quick mock up of a metro platform in blender. My focus there was to capture the particularly signature layout of one of our local metros. We find the frequent reuse of slight variations on this layout deeply disorienting and imposing on our bad days. On our good days, they're surreal and their near identical layouts feel more absurd,  comical even. And I will admit to being fairly proud of how my escalators came out. I've never made one from scratch before, and these ones I can just use the array modifier to lengthen the middle part to make them as absurdly tall or short as I like. :)

Because we're planning on keeping the final look fairly stylized, there aren't actually going to be too many more visual assets than those I've already started. Though very few of the 3d models are what I'd call finished yet. AND I do need to sit down and actually make an itemized list now that I'm done getting some concept imagery finished. 

There's still so much to do, and I'm very excited to continue tinkering on this with Trick. But for now, it's time to take a little break and catch up on what all the other folks in The Queerness and Games Jam have been up to! :D

As always, Love and Peace,

Briana