Introducing the Games of WordPlay 2019!
The 7th annual WordPlay Festival takes place Saturday, November 9th & 10th 2019!
Sat. November 9th, Sunday November 10th
Saturday 11:00am – 4:30pm and Sunday 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free!
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Hey everyone! We are at full HP from the Hand Eye Society Ball and we’re back again with another event–WordPlay 7 (they grow up so fast 😭)! This year is going to be bigger than ever hosting even more narrative games from all over the world! Also, this year, WordPlay is now a 2-day event! Which means you’ll have more talks, more workshops and you-time to experience all of the games we have in store for you!
Without further ado, we’re extremely excited to present to you the final lineup of games for WordPlay 2019! This year you can literally type your feelings out to the one you love in Types of Romance, all the way to doing your best to cover up a sacrifice with your friends in Animalia! Play them all! There’s plenty of time!
See you there!
Apologies, for what it’s worth
Shrunken Studios
Toronto, Canada
Read a dense letter from your sibling to explore your shared history and consider what you’ve left behind.
Xalavier Nelson Jr., Natalie Clayton, Priscilla Snow
El Paso, USA
A shortform visual novel about angry femme mechs at the end of the world, and God.
Bryan Depuy
Toronto, Canada
Unbecoming is a sonically-driven revisionist body horror denouement.
G.C. “Grim” Baccaris
New York, USA
Manipulate an eerie videotape and confront a dangerous infatuation by rewinding, fast-forwarding, and pausing the tape to alter its contents and reshape the fate of your love.
Mary Arroz & Xinran Ma
Oakville, Canada
Woo the high-born beauty of your dreams in this vintage shoujo-inspired dating sim/typing game!
Kat Aguiar, Nobonita Bhowmik, Francesca Carletto-Leon, Jordan Jones-Brewster, Carol Mertz, Jack Schlesinger
Global
“We should talk” is a short-form narrative game that will make you think twice about the words you choose.
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Michael Arcadi
Toronto, Canada
pressspace is a one-button typing game where you put the spaces in between words.
Greg Buchanan
UK
Play as Abigail Thoreau, a campaign assistant working to elect candidate Truman Glass in the 2016 American Election.
Sisi Jiang
USA
LIONKILLER is a choose-your-own-adventure game about Hua Mulan, a young lesbian who is conscripted into the First Opium War against the British Empire.
Recalculating***
Jessica Zhang, Benjamin Mora-Davison, Christine Kilfoil
Oakville, Canada
A soft thriller visual novel illustrating how women can be taken advantage of through daily social pressures, which men may be unaware of. Players navigate through conversations by launching a ball at words which visually represent their avatar’s thought process as the situation deteriorates.
Ian Michael Waddell
Victoria, Canada
Animalia is a massively-branching interactive comedy in which you play four forest creatures who are trying to cover up the ritual sacrifice of a small child by piloting a replica of that small child.
Demi Schanzel
New Zealand
Wander through a gentle garden of words, discover the mumbling words of other storytellers and leave a few of your own.
Jack Sanderson-Thwaite, Matthew Weekes, Vlad Abadzhiev, Michael Becze
Bristol, UK
Electric Sleep is a pixel art interactive story, where you explore a crumbling world as an emotionally driven robot.
Freya Campbell
Bristol, UK
A postmodern kinetic novel, finishing a trilogy about trans women in love, tarot, alien abduction, and escaping from cycles of self-loathing.
St. Catherines, Canada
David Evans (Falling Squirrel Inc.)
The Vale is a story driven, action/adventure game that sets out to breathe new life into medieval combat and provide a truly novel experience for visually impaired and sighted gamers alike.
John Vanderhoef
California, USA
Bound Together is a top-down narrative adventure game made in Bitsy that explores the relationship between a bounty hunter and his captive.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening to Steal Treasure
Alexander Blechman
Chicago, USA
A comedic poetry game where you remix one of Robert Frost’s most famous works, swapping out words to transform it into an epic fantasy battle.
Emily Flynn-Jones
Brantford, Canada
A game about words and how they wound; emotional abuse and fantasies of revenge; and doing witchcraft with your cat.
Local No. 12
New York, USA
Dear Reader turns classic literature into an addictive word puzzle game, and lets you curl up and play your favorite books from Pride and Prejudice to Pygmalion.
Nicholas O’Brien
Brooklyn, USA
The Last Survey is a narrative essay game about a geologist contracted by a Brazilian mining company to survey rare earth metal reserves.
Smolghost
Toronto, Canada
Three small self-directed narrative games to print and play wherever you are and whenever you feel like it!
Sharang Biswas
New York, USA
Verdure is an analogue storytelling and role-playing game about witchcraft and revenge, played in an empty kitchen while preparing and eating salad.