WordPlay 2018 Schedule & Arcade Showcase
Less than a week to go until WordPlay 6 is upon us! We are extremely excited to announce the final lineup of games that will be playable in this year’s arcade, selected by an international jury and spanning the globe from France to South Africa. Of course, the action all takes place right here at the Toronto Reference Library, where stories are the portals to a million possible worlds. Become a weird Internet cop in Hypnospace Outlaw; survive your job as an underpaid social media content moderator in Sentry; date your weapons in Boyfriend Dungeon; explore neo-veganism, food security, and gay aliens in It’s for Melody, and collect tales amidst a folkloric Great Depression USA in Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. Witchy Twines, historical interactive fiction, tough conversations, and genre-bending adventures await!
We’ve also got our full schedule of talks lined up below, so take a gander and Spread the Word!
The 6th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 10 2018.
Sat. November 10th, 12-5pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free!
RSVP on our Facebook page for updates!
Schedule
See the full list of speakers and talk descriptions here.
| Main Stage (Atrium) | Learning Centre 1 (Showcase Space) | Learning Centre 2 (Workshop Space) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Speakers | Event | Presenter | Event | |
| 12:00PM-1:00PM | Laura Michet | A Journey Through “Where the Water Tastes like Wine” (Keynote) | Arcade Showcase | ||
| ~Break~ | |||||
| 1:30PM-2:00PM | Xalavier Nelson Jr | I Was a Teenage Acolyte: What Mowing Lawns for a Cult Taught Me about Narrative Design | Josh Labelle | Beware and Warning! This Tweet Is Different From Other Tweets!’: Social Media As An Interactive Storytelling Medium | |
| 2:00PM-2:30PM | Miriam Verberg | We’re All Gonna Die!!! Writing Interactive Romance about the Elderly. | |||
| ~Break~ | ~Break~ | ||||
| 3:00PM-3:30PM | Alex Scokel | Not-Quite-Random Adventures: Designing, Writing, and Implementing World Map Encounters in Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire | Xalavier Nelson Jr | Despite Your Rage You Are Still A Rat In A Cage–Nicolas Cage, Who Is Suspending You Over A Pit Of Lava With His Former Servant Igor (#CAGEGAME) | |
| 3:30PM-4:00PM | Arthur Protasio | Excalibur, Disney and Turn-based Tactics! How do I craft this tale? | |||
| ~Break~ | |||||
| 4:30PM-5:00PM | Greg Buchanan | How to Make a Game Political | |||
Arcade Showcase
By Freya C / Communistsister, Bristol, United Kingdom
An interactive fiction horror game with interactive illustrations, about tarot, trans women, therapy, and alien abduction.
By: Maria ‘Leno’ Heyaca, Buenos Aires, Argentina
We are surrounded with faces. The ones of the people around us and the ones we carry with ourselves.
By: Matthew Ritter, California, USA
A visual novel with no choices where you get to shoot people in the steampunk wild west and maybe feel bad about it?
By: Jay Tholen, Mike Lasch, Xalavier Nelson Jr., Gemany & USA
Hypnospace Outlaw is an alternate-reality internet simulator in which players explore a variety of strange websites to find violations.
By: Deck of Bards, UK, Toronto, Global
Wolf at the Door is a slice-of-life folk horror game blending interactive fiction with resource management.
after HOURS
By: Bahiyya Khan, Johannesburg, South Africa
after HOURS is a point and click FMV whereby players are made witness to a night in the life of Lilith, a young woman that was molested as a child and has Borderline Personality Disorder as a result.
By: Narratio Studios, London, UK
An interactive simulator designed to test humanity’s ability to survive without electricity.
By: Tea-Powered Games, London, UK
Dialogue is a visual novel in which you play out a year in the life of Lucille, a writer working on her second novel, by making small choices during everyday conversations.
By: Sasha Reneau, Los Angeles, USA
Spindlewheel is a tarot-like storytelling game where you use the concepts in the cards as anchors to weave together a story with your friends!
Knife SistersBy: Transcenders Media / Bobbi A Sand, Malmö, Sweden
Knife Sisters is a dark slice of life story, an erotic visual novel centered around themes such as peer pressure, manipulation, love, obsession and BDSM.
By: Emma Kidwell, Maryland, USA
A short game about anxiety over aging, guilt, and and memory loss.
CircuitsBy: Elieen Mary Howowka, Montréal, Quebec
Circuits is a narrative-based Twine game that explores what it means to remember, witness, and talk about sexual trauma.
By: Kitfox Games, Montréal, Quebec
Date your weapons in this flirty, playful, welcoming dungeoncrawler. Plunder the dunj and take cute blades on romantic outings to level them up!
By: Marine Bernard, Nantes, France
When Video Game meets Dystopia YA Novel = NovaCorp.
Time To FeedBy: Sharang Biswas, NY, USA
A vampire’s latest victims unearth painful memories of his past.
By: Hien Pham and Amos Wolfe, Perth, Australia
It Will Be Hard is an interactive graphic novel about two men, with two polar opposite sexualities, working toward one mutually fulfilling relationship.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
By: Dim Bulb Games, Santa Fe, USA
A game about traveling, telling stories, and the American myth, set in a folkloric Great Depression United States, with characters from a wide variety of writers.
The MirrorBy: Kim McAuliffe, Seattle, USA
A metaphorical RPG about self-image, reflections, and reality.
Headliner: NoviNewsBy: Unbound Creations LLC, Seattle, USA
Short media bias adventure where YOU control national news and its impact on your career, society, and family.
Late Summer Nights, Episode 1By: Anna Prein, Vancouver, Canada
A visual novel exploring friendship on the 90s/00s internet, and what happens when it intersects with the “real world”.
The Crimson DiamondBy: Julia Minamata, Toronto, Canada
Text parser graphical mystery adventure game.
SentryBy: Josh Labelle, Toronto, Canada
An interactive short story in which you see how long you can last as a low paid social media content moderator — based on true stories of working conditions at the agencies where these jobs are done.
By: Jillian Wakarchuk, Toronto, Canada
It’s for Melody is a twine game about neo-veganism, food security, and gay aliens in outer space.
By: Devon Wiersma, Toronto, Canada
“Who Killed My Uncle” is a narrative game set in WWII about censorship, loss, and family you’ll never get to meet, made in memorium of my Great Uncle Sidney who died in the Spanish Civil War.
By: Team Salvato
You’ve become a new member of the Literature Club, will you write the way into their heart?
WordPlay Jury
Lena NW
Cătălin Nedeluș
Andrei Olaru
Todd Anderson
Nuha Alkadi
Ben Kybartas
Andrew G. Schneider
Kyle Seeley
Matthew Seiji Burns
Paul Alex Gray
Jenny Goldstick
Salvatore Pane
Adoné Kitching
Jury Assembler: Jo Summers
Partners
