Tag: games

Check out an exclusive clip from the ‘She Could Fly’ game by Wowbagger Productions

Christopher Cantwell and Martín Morazzo’s Berger Books series has been adapted into a video game about OCD and mental health.

She Could Fly by writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Martín Morazzo achieved liftoff in 2018 from Dark Horse Comics’ Berger Books imprint. It was the first published comic written by Cantwell, and also one that was very personal, as it featured a main character with OCD — something he’s spoken about suffering from since he was 10 years old.

Now She Could Fly has become part of a “documentary game” — the She Could Fly Documentary Escape Game, which is a point and click game from Wowbagger Productions that takes players on a looping adventure to explore OCD.

“For me, in the graphic novel, flying is a form of relief or freedom for the main characters,” Cantwell said. “In my life, what I look for, in terms of relief or freedom, is not happiness but peace of mind. Real peace of mind. Peace of mind is very important to me, and it’s something I’m always striving for. And I hope that by playing this game or reading our story, it helps you find some peace of mind as well.”

The game features artwork by Morazzo and colorist Miroslav Mrva from She Could Fly as part of the gameplay elements, and the creators hope it puts a spotlight on, and helps people understand, how OCD can affect someone.

“The work we do at Wowbagger Productions is very much about collaborating with creatives from marginalised perspectives to share less-known stories,” said Wowbagger Productions founder Sara Kenney, who wrote, directed and produced the game. “This is our first digital game and decades of storytelling and producing experience meant we ensured the comic, documentary and gameplay works together and flows in a meaningful way. Games for impact are an arena that the team at Wowbagger Productions are passionate about and want to continue our work, not just combining art and science, but also the different disciplines of games, comics and film.”

Check out our exclusive video clip below, which shows how some of the comic pages from She Could Fly are used in the game:

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Mat Groom + Kelly McMahon crowdfund a 1920s speakeasy-themed ‘Bad Blood’ card game

The campaign, which includes a comic by Groom and artist Nicoletta Baldari, launches on Kickstarter today.

When I spoke with Mat Groom a few weeks ago about the Kickstarter campaign for the second volume of Inferno Girl Red, he mentioned he was working with designer Kelly McMahon on a 1920s-themed murder mystery card game called Bad Blood. The crowdfunding campaign for the game is now live, and not only did Groom write the game, but he also wrote a tie-in comic for it.

The comic features artwork by Nicoletta Baldari and is available via one of the many tiers being offered to backers of the campaign. The comic provides some of the back story for the game, showing what life was like for Dee Dumas, the murder victim, and Joseph Field, the journalist who would wind up investigating her death (and who you play as in the card game), before the murder.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled by the mystery genre, be it film, television, literature or a good old fashion internet stalk, I love to be the detective!” said McMahon, a graphic designer and illustrator based in Los Angeles by way of Melbourne, Australia. “The romanticized glamor of the 1920s masquerades for the realities of the era. A ritzy elegant design, lavish lifestyles and devious underground happenings. There is a similar romance in moving your life to the otherside of the world, the dream sparkles but the reality is much less polished. All of this led to Bad Blood, my idea for a card game and murder mystery experience that harkens back to my love of the 1920s and my love for a good whodunnit.” 

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Comics Lowdown | Paul Rainey wins Jonathan Cape Prize

Plus: New manga licenses, minicomics reviews, and more!

Paul Rainey has won the 2020 Observer Jonathan Cape Comica Graphic Short Story Prize for his story Similar To But Not, a memoir of a chance encounter with a celebrity in a local pub in 1975. Rainey’s story and the runner-up, Ellen Durkin’s The Worm, are both available to read online.

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Role play as a role player in the ‘Die’ RPG

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ comic about role-playing games naturally gets its own RPG.

If you’ve been Die-ing (sorry) to play the role-playing game at the center of Kieron Gillen and the amazing Stephanie Hans‘ Die comic book, you are now in luck — a beta version of the Die RPG is now available on the Die website.

The materials include a manual, character sheets and additional gamemaster materials, with something called the “Arcana” — “weird stuff and supplementary material” — coming with the next arc of the comic.

“It’s a somewhat meta RPG which is designed to let a group of players make their own version of the first arc of Die,” Gillen said in his email newsletter. “It’s about Die the situation rather than the specifics of Die. As in, you generate a group of real world people, who then sit down to play a role-playing game, before getting dragged into a fantasy world. Yes, it’s a little Meta. One of the playtesters described it as a manual of how to make your own Kieron Gillen-esque story, which I quite like. There’s a lot of me trying to explain how stories work, and how DIE works specifically. That means I suspect some of it will be interesting to folks who have no interest in RPGs at all. There are also at least three funny jokes.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Jason Thompson and Jumana Al Hashal on ‘Cartooner’

Jason Bradley Thompson and Jumana Al Hashal discuss going from gamer to creator.

What’s it like to go from gaming to creating your own games?

The husband-and-wife team of Jason Bradley Thompson and Jumana Al Hashal have plenty to say on that topic. Both are serious gamers who are running a Kickstarter campaign to fund their second game, Cartooner: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics. Cartooner focuses on the creative elements of comics and allows anyone who can draw a stick figure to make their own—while the clock is ticking. We talked to Jason and Jumana about how they created a game that turns the players into comics creators, and they also shared some of the game art by Konstantin Pogorelov.

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The dead of summer brings ‘Dead of Winter’ #1 from Oni Press [Preview]

New comic based on the tabletop game kicks off this week from Kyle Starks and Gabo.

As announced at C2E2 earlier this year, Kyle Starks and Gabo have teamed up for a new horror-comedy mini-series based on the board game Dead of Winter by Plaid Hat Games.

The first issue arrives this week, and publisher Oni Press has shared a preview:

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Comics Lowdown: Sophie Labelle’s webcomic hacked

Plus news and updates on Don Martin, Todd McFarlane, Tom Spurgeon and more.

Webcomics creator Sophie Labelle reported on Facebook yesterday that her webcomic about a transgender girl, Assigned Male, had been hacked and the page was down:

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