Her Story (Dial for Disquiet)

2024
Alternate Controller (Telephone), PC
Made as part of the Óbidos Game Jam

Her Story was made as a response to the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata, India. Using an analogue telephone as an alternate controller, the game puts the players in the victim’s shoes and exposes the absence of safety and empathy for women in a patriarchal society. To date, it has been the most meaningful and expressive game I have ever made.

The game resulted from the theme of the jam - 'Disquiet'. Having participated in the social movement for justice for the victim before coming to Europe, I was deeply disturbed by the situation back home and wanted to express my anger and helplessness through a game. I wanted people to question the normalisation of patriarchy and misogyny, and place themselves in the shoes of the victim. I wanted people to understand, to empathise.

I chose to do this through designing a game which evokes the feeling of helplessness and horror. My teammates - Uswah (she/her) from Pakistan and Raghad (she/her) from Palestine - and I deliberately chose to use the telephone as an interface that strips the player of power. We used the act of listening to create empathy by bridging the gap between the player’s safety and the victim’s vulnerability.

Post-jam, I consulted friends, writers, activists, and doctors. This provided valuable insights and made me realise that the pain of women in my country is shared globally. It helped me refine the dialogue and achieve the sensitivity required to tell ‘Her’ Story, not mine - a perspective I, as a male, could never fully understand.

I have presented the game at the Fólio International Literary Festival in Portugal and at a symposium at UniArts Stockholm.

You can read my post-mortem and reflections on the game here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TAwZKoLUBLnSdDWOsGbCgAvK4iaIJ8wi/view?usp=drive_link