Zine Month: Tiny games

Hello to everyone! Allison here once again reporting from Soft Chaos Headquarters. 

As you may have noticed, Soft Chaos had a very busy year+. We did a lot of very rewarding (but very emotionally taxing) teaching followed by being contracted to develop an entire game (which we hope to share with you soon) in a 6-month-timeframe. This game took up a lot of time and creative energy from the cooperative. We’re extremely proud of it, but it did mean that our creative output as a cooperative was put on hold a little while we were lucky enough to be working on something that fulfilled us creatively. 

After this project, though, we all needed a bit of a break and we began an era that we have internally referred to as “Chill Fall”. This gave us time to do lots of things, some of which was our own creative work. Squinky has been working on a super secret new digital game which is nearing completion (and you’ll get to hear about in an upcoming post!) but I have spent some time refocusing on my first game love: TTRPGs. 

If you didn’t know my (still pretty new) wife and I have been making games together under the banner Gal Pal Games. During the downtime from Soft Chaos, this is where my creative energy has been going and this month we are launching three Kickstarters for zine games to coincide with Zine Month. 

I wanted to share these labours of love with you, and also spread awareness about Zine Month– a cool time for people to create and promote small game projects– please check out all the unique and absurd things happening across multiple crowdfunding sites! 

First, a zine full of games I designed myself: Gay Games To Play In The Car While Your GF Drives You To Go Camping. Games are art, games are experiences, games are systems, games are so many wonderful things - but also, games are games! Games are silly things that people make up, that we have always made up, to have fun and pass the time. 

Here are some facts: 

• My wife and I often go camping in the summer. 

• We go out into the forest north of Montreal, where the internet gets really spotty and eventually cuts out altogether. 

• I don’t drive, so she’s always the driver. 

• The one thing I hate most in the world is boredom.
  
  

Put all of these facts together and you have the situation that gave birth to this zine (Gay Games To Play In The Car, for short). It contains a total of eight small games, actual games that I made up on camping trips, to play with my wife on long drives under very specific circumstances: in a car, with one person driving, and with spotty internet. Gay Games To Play In The Car has rules for fanfic bingo, a magic pony dating game, and more. It’s a very different kind of project for me, and I’m incredibly excited to share it with the world. 

Speaking of my wife, the second game I want to tell you about is one that she designed. A few years ago, she published Sapphic Slumber Party, a storytelling game about young queer people at a sleepover. Then Bottoms came out, the movie about teenage lesbians trying to impress girls by starting a fight club, and she was utterly smitten with the concept (or maybe it was just Ayo Edebiri). 

 

Drink My Sweat is her “remix” of Sapphic Slumber Party to tell a different, more transgressive kind of story. Players make up a group of queer women coming to fight club, and then take turns narrating their fights, and how they get messed up. The fighters get hurt, but that’s not a bad thing: they’re using their bodies, finding new ways to feel and experience them, and it’s kind of fun. Plus they’re putting their bodies close together, and that’s kind of fun too. 

Drink My Sweat is a hot sweaty mess of queer feminine aggression that the world needs more than ever now. 

Finally, a game we designed together. Her Cup Overfloweth is another product of our long drives. It hasn’t launched yet but will be coming mid-month. We worked out the concept of the game on a long drive through backroads, on our way to visit Dee’s family in Massachusetts. I was teasing her (which is my favorite game) and we started talking about how you’d model teasing in a TTRPG. We thought about different images and metaphors until we hit one we liked, and then we kept playing with different ideas until we found a way to turn that image into a kind of play. It's turned into a real artistic endeavour as I've unleashed my inner zine maker in a truly traditional collage format. Here is an early draft page from the game.

Her Cup Overfloweth is a game for two people, and it centers around a carafe of water, and a glass. One player is the Queen, and her character teases; the other is the Princess, and her character is teased. The Queen and Princess play out a fictional teasing conversation, with an added layer of non-verbal communication: the Queen controls the carafe, and pours water in the Princess’s glass. The Princess drinks water as she likes. When the cup spills–because the Queen pours until it overflows, or the Princess decides to spill instead of drink–the game, and the fictional exchange, end.  

This is an artsy game, an experimental game. It’s also erotic, and pretty personal. Dee and I wrote it together, and we were trying to write about something that’s part of our relationship. We really love Her Cup Overfloweth; it’s already had some life out in the world, an early version having been published in issue 1 of Mixed Success, a very cool ttrpg digital magazine. We’re excited to bring this very analog game into the real world with a print run.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look into my personal creative work this season and look forward to Squinky’s updates soon! Soft Chaos itself is picking back up after our (extended) Chill Fall as we move into our new office. The furniture was delivered and everything (though we still have to build most of it). Expect pictures when that’s done. There’s always something happening at Soft Chaos Headquarters.

Happy Zine Month!
Allison