Genkception

2025
Physical Location - C-Mine, Genk, Belgium
Made as part of the 'Speculative Design' module

Genkception was a LARP made by by 30 game designers at LUCA School of Arts, Genk. The key aspect of making this LARP was to speculate about the relationship between the past and the present, how characters and objects can influence events throughout time. It was one of the most complex games I have worked on, as our design approach was centred not around a particular tone, but around characters, and the possibilities in their stories. This resulted in people creating characters and artifacts across four different time periods - Medieval Era, Colonisation, Industrial Migration and Modern Day, which resulted in an uncountable combination of cause and effects in storytelling.

As a Level Designer, I had to work with the Narrative Design team to incorporate the rules for artifacts - their placement, uses, powers - into the world space, and also design the level in a way which facilitates different time zones to interact organically, without breaking immersion. This required multiple iterations and playtest, to minimise the play-area around a maze, and using different sections within and outside of the maze to create improvisational storytelling, through dynamic gameplay scenarios.

You can read the Playbook here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QdEeOBBCTjqJnBvPCqpKpE9ohuUwMfhmcjU-JGkcjhE/edit?usp=sharing
This board contains all the characters and themes: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVIfMYFJA=/
You can read a post-mortem reflection of my experience here:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E9wpfUlxveB29TuHz55kah8yCkIBk3jlAMZ-B5PB_Mw/edit?usp=sharing

Below you will find the multiple maps that were designed and discarded till we arrived to the final version.