i will be SHOWING A BUILD and trying not to ACTIVELY DIE as you play our beautiful and VERY MUCH WORK-IN-PROGRESS game RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY LITTLE FACE. come!!

Oomanakuttan, for instance, is a civil society leader who comes across as dour and snarky, especially to Kuyili with her wild ideas. He has decades of experience and sees change as a slow struggle that just takes lots of hard and boring work. (sketch by @monkeyverse.bsky.social). However,

Earlier this year, we released our debut trailer at Wholesome Direct! We’ve had a load of new followers since then, so in case you missed it, please check out our trailer! You can follow All Will Rise on our #Kickstarter now: www.kickstarter.com/projects/spe... #IndieGame #IndieDev #GameDev

This means playing your cards right, or more precisely - playing the right cards. Strong evidence and showing that you've put in the leg work are good ways to connect to Oomanakuttan.

If you can understand this about Oomanakuttan, it may become easier to work with him and overcome his skeptical stance toward Kuyili and the team somewhat. #gamedev #personality

We had a fantastic character development session yesterday with the theam, where we discussed how the different theories of change that different people in our Muziris have get translated into cards they can play. 1/ #gamedev #indiegames #writing #characters

good morning to everyone who strikes fear in the hearts of men

Thanks for hosting another #PitchYaGame! All Will Rise is an upcoming narrative courtroom deck-builder about ordinary people who make the powerful pay for destroying our future. Play as a lawyer, as she and her team take a corrupt billionaire to court for a river’s murder. bsky.app/profile/allw...

We are inspired in our worldbuilding by the idea of 'infrastructures of mystery' - what a society would look like that has been structured to give people's connection to the mystery of life a central, sacred place. anticiplay.medium.com/infrastructu... #indiegames #spirituality

Our Murizis is also a city of many faiths and spiritual practices, that are in turn connecting in unusual ways with political and technological experiments. It starts with our tagline 'the river is a god, and they killed her' - but there are mysteries everywhere.

This allows us to play with that imaginative tension. What is the same? What is different? In our version of Kerala, the state, already known for being a place for utopian experimentation, becomes more unusual in terms of the interest people have in trying out new, utopian ideas. #utopia #indiegames

The mystery, depth, and weirdness of the world of Muziris makes for such a wonderful dynamic contrast with the more strategic, political side of the game: winning the court case, and building a movement. #indiegames #utopia

Another inspiration for our sideways speculative version of reality in Kerala is the 'Seeds of Good Anthropocenes' project that tries to find initatives and projects that already exist everywhere around the world - and that could inspire a better future. goodanthropocenes.net

An early decision in the development of All Will Rise was to go for a 'sideways speculative' version of Kerala - not in the future, but an alternative present reality that has many interesting similarities and differences compared to our own world. #gamedev #indiedev #speculativefiction

Reading about how one motivation for younger people to get involved in the Mamdani campaign was loneliness and a desire to find community brought me back to thinking about alchemizing the loneliness pandemic into social action. Wrote about that a few years ago: anticiplay.medium.com/heart-conste...

Yeah that’s me live streaming for the first time in ages. Let’s see how that goes…

Hello, new followers! We are Speculative Agency, the team behind All Will Rise! It’s our upcoming video game, where you play as a lawyer who fights for the rights of the earth, as she and her team take a corrupt billionaire to court for a river’s murder. #GameDev #IndieDev #IndieGame

You can follow along with All Will Rise by wishlisting us on Steam or following our Kickstarter page. The project will go live early next year! Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3165340/... Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/spe... #GameDev #IndieDev #IndieGame

Follow our fearless team!!

When we started developing All Will Rise our focus was on the court case - mostly struggling against corporate power. But as we developed the game and tested early demos with players we realized that we wanted to focus more on a mix of power AGAINST corporates and power FOR a vision of the future.

We work with the sociological concept of 'emotional energy', which is very helpful describe the dynamics of collective action. Strong emotional energy can come from collective joy AND care AND standing up against injustice. Mamdani builds emotional energy on a basis of real social policy.

It's good to compare @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's win to the victory of @robjetten.bsky.social in the Netherlands, which has been described as being 'vibes over policy', and rightly so, given his party's neoliberal program. Mamdani brings powerful vibes based on real social action. Big contrast.

Our corporate exec Rishabh is definitely all 'vibes over policy'.

Tessa and colleagues also discuss, specifically, transformative power - the power to really change things for the better. Prefigurative power is about imagining a better future, countervailing power is about fighting back against the powerful; reinforcive power helps stabilize new power structures.

Similarly, different types of power (power to, power with, power over) are juicy sources of storytelling and game play, sometimes dark, sometimes more positive. See this paper by Tessa de Geus, Flor Avelino and colleagues: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A historical victory in New York! With the All Will Rise team we have followed @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social 's campaign closely, since the game is as much about mobilizing social action FOR a better future as it is about the work to fight AGAINST corporate powers. #mamdani #indiegames #politics

Historic victory for Democratic Socialism and, frankly, the good of the country.

Working on new thinking with Rosa Lewis about building infrastructures of living mystery. What societal infrastructures can help make space for people's sovereignty, for their desires, and for their connection to mystery? How do sovereignty, desire, and mystery power the path to a better world?

Made a starter pack based on cool responses to earlier thread (see below) about games that fearlessly work toward a better future and find the fun in the political struggle. Starter packs = a bit over but still. Ping us if you know more folks: go.bsky.app/Fhw51ip #gamedev #indiedev #indiegames

This thread is turning out to be quite interesting for a project I'm involved in - a series of videos and texts for game developers focusing on more sustainable futures together with some major partner organizations (more soon).

We're making a game with the central thread of punching up: where you play as a tiny sparrow trying to free all the other birds who have been trapped by The Storyteller. We're light on lore, but hopefully everyone who plays feels freedom singing in their veins! store.steampowered.com/app/3473440/...

So I recently finished playing Mini Mini Golf Golf by @threemoreyears.bsky.social and I think you might have some common stuff to talk about. They're tackling climate collapse through the lense of a simple golf game, merged with Immortality-like segments you have to decode. It's really good!

Oh! A new video essay by @noahgervais.bsky.social. My favorite youtube essayist by a mile. Always truly excellent and insightful. I hadn't really paid attention to Cronos: The New Dawn until now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCIL...

omg remember when the maga-gaters (maga-gamergaters) were all mad that wolfenstein was deemed "political" like bro hate to tell you about all that rage against the machine ur listening to

One of the best things about @deconstructeam.bsky.social's The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is its pervasive sense of mystery and spirituality, a strong vibe among all the playfulness. All Will Rise is about fighting corporate forces, but we believe the mystical is key for this. #indiedev #spirituality

Another game that does this really well is The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood by @deconstructeam.bsky.social. This game combines coziness and deep and dark topics, eros and joy and sadness and climate change and cosmic struggles and everything else. Such an inspiration for us. #indiedev #politics #gamedev

For All Will Rise, the juiciness is in the contrasts: the hard battle against corporate power AND going to wild parties AND hanging out with your friends AND taking care of your loved ones AND having ridiculous arguments with your team. Coziness and conflict can go together. #cozygames #indiedev

In a time of rising fascism and corporate domination, this wild, free, human warrior spirit is crucial. So yes - Wolfenstein the New Colossus but make it a strategic deck builder RPG about local politics and saving a river is really not a bad description of the energy we are aiming for.

This is where the new Wolfenstein games are actually the best inspiration - wildly and joyously rebellious against oppression and hate; while bringing a lot of heart and humanity to the table, especially when it came to the group of resistance fighters.

We are making this game because this is the kind of game we want to play ourselves - games that bring out all of the messy humanity. Disco Elysium did this like no other game; but in a pessimistic noir mode where there was little scope for societal change. We aim to bring wild power and energy.

With All Will Rise we zoom in on the struggle in local politics where things get personal. Where change happens one person at a time, and where people are goofy, dark, hilarious and very human. That's where we find the juice. #gamedev #videogames #politics

Politics and societal change can be frustrating and painful topics. But they're also at the core of what it means to be human together. They can be exciting, hilarious, tense as fuck, absurd. Think of all the great TV shows that are made on the basis of this realization. What about games? #indiedev

Games like Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper, and even the Wolfenstein series have shown that it's possible to engage with societal problems while being massively fun - or actually, drawing their fun from those challenges. We believe it's not a tradeoff. #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

Do you know about a game being developed or maybe released right now that aims to do something good for society while being firmly in the entertainment game space, engaging as hell? We're curious to find peers #indiegames #indiedev #gamedev

Our team member @joostvervoort.bsky.social has written about games, the sacred and mystery here for the Fetzer institute: fetzer.org/case-study/e... #indiedev #gamedev #spirituality #mysticism

Working on new thinking with Rosa Lewis about building infrastructures of living mystery. What societal infrastructures can help make space for people's sovereignty, for their desires, and for their connection to mystery? How do sovereignty, desire, and mystery power the path to a better world?

🤣❤️

Can't wait to play this Ace Attorney-like game about climate change 🤩 #indiegames

I’ve been following the development of this game for a while and, if they can pull it off, it could be something special. Daybreak the board game also explores climate change and what we could do about it in interesting ways! PS please have a Mac version…